Knights of Ruin
by Gamebird
Summary: Origin story and character background for the Knights of Ren. Who are they? Where did they come from? Why did they go with Ben? What really went down that night while Luke was buried in the rubble? This is a standalone series, but is used as background for my other Grey Order stories. I may add additional chapters as inspiration strikes.
1. Orientation Chapter

A/N: This whole chapter is author's notes. Skip to the next if you like living dangerously. Or keep reading for a peek into my writing process.

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The following chapters are perfectly fine as stand-alone scenes. For those who don't follow the rest of the Grey Order series, this chapter is an orientation on who all these new characters are. Or if you do follow Grey Order, it's still a recap.

The Knights of Ren (aka the Knights of Ruin) began as Kylo Ren and the six students of Luke Skywalker who left with them after the burning of Luke's Jedi Academy. They chose new names for themselves after leaving. In this chapter, they go by their original names.

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Knights of Ren (and ages at the time of the burning of the Jedi Academy):

Juleen = Caspire, 25 (Human), later nicknamed 'Casp'

Ben = Kylo, 23 (Human)

Lonnick = Tark, 23 (Trandoshan – reptilian, sometimes shortened to Doshan or Doshie)

Mozzick = Steel, 21 (Human) … Lonnick and Mozzick are sometimes called the Brothers Ick.

Nera = Nera, 13 (Shifala – simian)

Amasara = Tonza, 11 (Human), nicknamed 'Sara' (pronounced 'SAWR-ah')

Stekaly = Jophesta, 8 (Human), nicknamed 'Kaly' (pronounced 'Kah-LEE'), later nicknamed 'Jo'

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The unfortunate students who did not side with Ben Solo on that fateful night:

Tre – 26 (Fondorian – near-human, hairless/tall)

Amyjav - 22 (Human), nicknamed 'Amy' (pronounced 'AH-mee')

Elldal – 21 (Pantoran – near-human, blue)

Natlyn – 18 (Human)

Triski – 18 (Rodian – like Greedo)

Brep – 15 (Togruta – like Ahsoka)

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Those who live are six years older at the time of TFA/TLJ and nine months older than that by the time of Happily Ever After. Steel and Nera showed up in Pacification. Caspire and Tark don't show until the later chapters of Happily Ever After.

At the point of the burning of his temple, Luke had been running his school for almost ten years. Only Ben, Juleen, Elldal, and Tre were with him from the start. Lonnick and Amyjav joined next, followed by Mozzick. Nera joined a few years later. The last were Amasara, Brep, Stekaly, Natlyn, and Triski, in that order. Note that Stekaly was six when she was delivered to Luke. She was not a willing member. Neither was Ben, Lonnick, Nera, or Brep, although all of them had reconciled themselves to it one way or another.

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There were two major references in Grey Order that I used in constructing this backstory. They are these sections of Kylo Ren talking to Rey:

From chapter 10 of 'Grey and Complicated':

"They handed me off to Luke like I was defective and it was his mission to fix me. He was a tyrant, never happy with anything I did – 'do or do not; there is no try' – how contemptible to expect an untrained child to be capable the first time? How callous to condemn us for failing, to blame us for not being masters and for needing his help?

"Luke's lessons to me were too much about controlling my dark impulses, developing self-control, bottling it all up if I couldn't make it stop. I knew it was unfair when Luke was teaching me that – everyone did except for Luke. The other students would taunt me about it later! He'd set me to drills about patience and show the others something interesting, then criticize me for being distracted. It happened time after time. When I'd complain, he'd tell me the faster I purged the dark side from myself, the sooner I could join the rest. It made me all the more bitter when I found out I was related to Vader. I knew then that I couldn't get rid of the dark side. He would always sense it in me. It was in my blood. Luke was never going to train me properly. Never!

"And Snoke was always there in a corner of my head, telling me Luke was wrong, that I had a destiny worth fulfilling, that if I continued, I would one day have enough power to overthrow the stars themselves. He taught me little dark side tricks in secret and told me Luke would be angry if he knew. Then I woke to find Luke ready to kill me for it."

"I knew Luke wasn't dead when I collapsed the hut on him. He was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, the legend himself!" Ben snarled and spit the name. "He was too strong! I thought he would come for me. I thought he wouldn't give up. That's what he'd told all of us over and over: 'Jedi don't give up!' and 'When a Jedi makes a mistake, he never rests until he makes it right.' I told the other students what he'd done, that he'd tried to kill me. The ones who believed me, came with me. The ones who didn't, who thought they needed to turn me over to Luke for Luke to finish – we fought. They lost.

"I burned down the temple. It was just a delaying tactic. I didn't want him to know what we'd taken with us or left behind. I didn't want him to have a house to stay in or a bed to sleep in. I wanted him confused, slowed, and discouraged. And it worked."

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From chapter 12, 'Alternatives' of Orderly Lives:

 _Who is she?_ Rey asked. Clearly she mattered to Kylo, perhaps as much as his parents, but his grief was less muddled and complicated than it had been with them.

 _Jophesta! One of the knights. They have the knights, the Knights of Ren!_ Desperately, he sought them out. Four lives he touched, scattered on the High Command capital ships, all sedated but alive. The fifth he could not find, but he sensed it merely meant she was not near. The sixth was Jophesta. _They're going to kill one of them every time I suborn someone. I have to surrender!_

 _That was a girl. She couldn't have been over … fifteen,_ Rey thought in confusion, trying to work out how one of the fearsome Knights of Ren was younger than Rey herself. _You were all Luke's students, right?_

 _She was the youngest of us!_ Kylo responded in her mind, distraught. _Did you think Luke Skywalker's students were all of an age? The Force is not so convenient. She was brought to him as a youngling, just two years before Luke tried to kill me. Her parents saw her as a wild animal, unmanageable, dangerous. Luke had no skills as a parent and she was too young for him to intimidate the way he wanted, but they dumped her and left. He taught her next to nothing. She believed me that he would try to murder me in my sleep. I wasn't the only one he failed!_

 _I brought her with me. I couldn't leave her with him! She's the one who chose the name Ruin, then Ren. Always a child! Snoke said that Brendol Hux's first recruits had been her age when she'd been brought to Skywalker, that she would manage with us, that she'd learn. He said the Jedi of old started even younger. Six years she's been with me. She's not an animal. She was_ never _an animal._ He shook with rage, the dark side continuing to boil up inside of him. He tried to pull his hands away to isolate himself, but Rey gripped harder.

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There you have it. Now on with the story.


	2. The Burning of the Temple

**A/N: Immediately after Ben pulls down the hut on Luke Skywalker. Beta by sunangelflowers on Tumblr.**

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Ben staggered from the ruins of his hut, stumbling over loose stones as he went. The other students were rushing from their own residences, most garbed in sleeping robes as he was, but theirs were clean. His were dirty, grey and splotched with darkness. His feet were bare. Most of those who hurried to him had at least put on their boots. He clutched his lightsaber in one hand and had his belt in the other.

Tre was first to reach him, taller than Ben and hairless like Fondorians usually were. He was one of the original students, along with Ben, Juleen, and Elldal. "What happened?" Tre asked in alarm. As the oldest, he often conducted himself up as an authority. Even under the best conditions, it grated against Ben's nerves.

"Luke," Ben gasped, still struggling to believe what had happened. "Master Luke tried to kill me!" He said it almost to himself, looking back at the disheveled timber that had been his home – his own little place away from everyone. Now it was a ruin. And, possibly, a tomb. Was Luke still in there? He had to be. Was he dead? Ben didn't know. He put on his belt, snugging his robes closed.

"What?" Tre looked past him at the destroyed hut. "You had a nightmare?"

"No!" Ben said fiercely, turning on him. "It was real! I woke up. Master Luke was there. His lightsaber was lit! He swung it to kill me! He was going to murder me, in my sleep!"

Putting words to it helped, but Tre just blinked at him, dumbfounded. Next to him, Juleen asked, "Are you sure?"

Ben turned to her. "Yes, I'm sure! That's what he did!"

Lonnick and Amyjav came up, listening. Lonnick, a Trandoshan, peered past him. He was naked, but as a reptilian with no external sexual characteristics, it hardly mattered. "You killed Master Luke? That was the disturbance I felt?"

Finally, someone who believed him! "I didn't- I don't know." Ben wasn't sure if he wanted him dead or not. To have murdered someone? His own uncle? But on the other hand, Luke had tried to sneak in and kill Ben in his sleep like a coward. Snoke had been telling Ben to be wary of Luke all along. Ben tried to sense Luke's life force, but he was too unsettled to pick up anything but his own overwhelming fear. "I collapsed the hut. He's under it. He might still be alive. He tried to kill me." His voice was wretched for the last statement.

"Why would he do a thing like that?" Tre asked.

"After today?" Lonnick snapped at Tre. Ben wasn't the only one who had issues with Luke. Only yesterday, the news of Ben's ancestry had broken, which by implication meant Luke, their teacher, was the direct son of Darth Vader. They had all known him as the son of Anakin Skywalker and sister of Leia Organa. The revelation about them both had sparked no end of dissent and unrest.

Even the most blasé about it agreed they hadn't signed up to be taught by the son of the galaxy's most notorious Sith lord. Luke hadn't had any good explanations as to why he'd concealed that from the people whom he'd taught to value openness, acceptance, and truth. Today had been worse than the day before, with Ben and Luke snarling at each other all day, the very air crackling with their tempers. It was enough to make everyone believe they were both related to Darth Vader.

Juleen moved toward the hut. "If he's still alive, we have to dig him out."

Lonnick grabbed at her, his claws hooking into the loose cloth of her robes. "Wait. We need to know why this happened."

Ben snarled as he clipped his lightsaber to his belt. "Why? It's no mystery! Luke talked about it since the beginning! That I might be tempted by the dark side or that I might fall on purpose because it's in my blood!" He bared his teeth to Lonnick, who bore a special sympathy for that. Trandoshans were known throughout the galaxy as aggressive brutes. It was Lonnick's goal to be better than his people's reputation.

"Master Luke is right. You should stay away from the dark side," Brep said. He was a Twi'lek and nearly a decade younger than Ben. The others who had been speaking were Ben's age. The newer students were hanging back, but now that Brep had spoken, Triski and Natlyn moved forward near him, emboldening him to say what he thought they were all thinking. "We all know you're prone to it," Brep continued. "We can sense it in you, especially now. So could Master Luke. If you'd just done what you were told, none of this would have happened."

Lonnick said snidely, "You know, if someone woke me out of a sound sleep to kill me, I'd be feeling a bit dark myself." He was still hanging onto Juleen, who was unwilling to fight with him over it.

Brep said loudly, "No! It's all the time with him! We've all felt it! At least those of us who are sensitive to it." He sneered at Lonnick.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lonnick asked, but he wasn't answered. It hardly needed an answer. It was assumed that any Force-sensitive Trandoshan would have an instinctive predisposition towards the dark side.

"Master Luke didn't try to kill him," Amyjav said, stating it like an obvious fact.

"Yes, he did!" Ben insisted. "You have no idea what he did! You weren't there!"

"We need to get Master Luke _out_ ," Juleen said, tugging at where Lonnick was still holding the arm of her robe. He didn't let go.

"If you get him out," Ben said, "he'll finish the job! He will _kill_ me!"

Lonnick said reasonably, "What was Master Luke doing in Ben's hut anyway? In the middle of the night?"

Everyone looked around at each other. No one offered a good answer or even a bad one. Master Luke did not make surprise visits to his student's private quarters in the dark of the night. Especially, _especially,_ after two days of emotional upheaval for everyone.

"I told you - he came there to kill me," Ben said. "That's all I know. But that – I _know_ that. He was swinging at me when I woke up. I _felt_ his intent. It was as black as the night!"

"That can't be true," Amyjav said. She shook her head dismissively.

Brep said to Ben, "What is true, what's definitely true, is that I sense the dark all over you. It's like you're evil!" He glanced back at Triski and Natlyn, both taller and a few years older than he, but part of the second wave of students rather than the first. They both nodded to confirm what he was feeling. "If Master Luke was alive, he'd be out here. He'd be digging himself out. And Ben wouldn't reek of the dark side right now! What if Master Luke is dead? What if he killed him?"

Triski, the Rodian girl, said, "We should put him in binders and call the law. Let them settle it. They can investigate."

Mozzick snorted. "We are the law," he muttered.

Triski's constant companion, Natlyn, gave Mozzick a dirty look. Then she added in, "We should call the authorities _and_ we should dig out Master Luke, whether he's dead or alive! Why are we just standing here arguing? We don't just leave our master under a load of stone because his worst student is raving about a nightmare."

"None of that even makes sense!" Ben spat. "If it was a nightmare, then he's not there!" Ben turned to the rest of them, swinging his arms wide. "I did not bring him to my hut in the night! I don't even have my shoes on!" He pointed back at the hut. "I did not tear down my own place for no reason! Everything I had was in there! It was not a dream or a vision! It was _real_."

"So much dark," Brep said. His gaze was distant like he was seeing another layer of reality. "But I see the future." His breath came shakily. "We are never going to have a master again." He shook himself, coming back into the now. He looked at the others with fear. "We're going to die! What are we going to do?"

"Not be so overdramatic, for starters," Lonnick said dryly. "Everyone dies anyway. But as far as 'no master' goes, that just means we have to decide for ourselves." He _still_ had hold of Juleen, as she was the only one of the older students ready to go into Ben's destroyed hut and find out for herself if Luke was there or not.

"We should take a vote!" said Elldal, the Pantoran. He'd said nothing until now.

"A vote?" Brep said weakly. "I'm serious. We're going to _die_. I saw it …" He was pale and shaken, but this was hardly the first time he'd claimed the Force had shown him strange tidings. They never came to pass the way he said, but they did usually come to pass in a manner of speaking.

Tre spoke up again. "A vote is not how we settle important matters like this, but outsiders should not be involved. Master Luke would not want that. He never settled things by vote, but by the wisest deciding."

"Master Luke was the wisest," Triski said.

Natlyn took a few steps forward. "We shouldn't be arguing. We should just dig him out!"

"Hey, uh," Mozzick said from the rear of the group, "if we believe Ben's story and we dig Luke out and he's alive, then he's just going to kill him. Because he was there to kill him to start with and Ben dropped a hut on him. If Luke's already dead, then we can argue about this all we want. There's no hurry."

"It's _Master_ Luke," Brep said, turning to face Mozzick, who'd been hanging back with Nera and Amasara, two of the three youngest. The absolute youngest, Stekaly, was absent. Mozzick had little skill in the Force, so he was often tasked with tending the younglings.

"Yes," Amyjav said. "He is our master. This is stupid. He wouldn't kill one of his students. We have to dig him out." She moved forward again, but Ben got in her way.

"No!" Ben told her. "If you dig him out, I die." He had no illusions of how he'd fare against Luke in a serious battle. He'd gotten lucky in the hut. It wouldn't happen again.

"You cannot stop me," she said back, but although she was within an arm's length of him, she didn't try to push past. She was barely an adult and she was neither big nor physically inclined. Ben's presence was intimidating even without the Force – and they all knew how much power he could channel. Luke had warned Ben about it repeatedly.

Tre said, "None of this makes sense. I think it was just a nightmare."

"A nightmare that woke all of us?" Juleen asked.

"Maybe it was the sound of the hut collapsing, or him using that much dark power," Tre suggested. "Even if Master Luke was within Ben's hut for some reason, the Force would have protected him from the stones. He would be here talking with us already." Tre shook his head. "It must not have happened. Ben must be mistaken."

"But what if he's _not_?" Triski said in alarm. "We should put him binders for using that much dark power! Master Luke can deal with him in the morning."

"I'll go get him," Amasara said. She was a human girl of barely eleven. She turned and ran up the path toward the main building of the academy.

Mozzick looked after her for a moment. He turned back and said, "We'll know soon enough if Luke's alive."

" _Master_ Luke!" Brep yelled at Mozzick.

Nera made a hissing noise and shrank away from Mozzick's side to hide behind a low stone wall.

Brep ignored her and kept railing at Mozzick and then the rest of them. "Why do you keep leaving that off? And he's dead! I can feel it! Can't the rest of you? Why can't the rest of you feel it? The dark side is everywhere right now, all around us! If he was alive, would we still be arguing? Ben killed him! We have to _do_ something! The moment is almost on us!" Brep was beside himself with agitation, as though he could see Death itself hovering over his friends, who blithely ignored his warning.

Triski yelled, too, but it was only, "Binders!"

"Younglings," Tre boomed. "Shut up!"

"We are not younglings!" Brep insisted, although in most areas, Tre's label would be accurate. "We are Jedi! People who kill their masters are monsters! They must die! Maybe that's what I saw – we have to kill him." He pointed at Ben.

The death threat was not lost on Ben, but what truly upset him was that word: 'monster'. Ben remembered being referred to as one in his parent's angry whispers behind closed doors. Like fools, they didn't realize his Force-enhanced hearing could pick up what they said anywhere in the house. Then one day Han left because his mother wouldn't get rid of Ben the way Han wanted her to. Eventually she did it anyway, dropping Ben off here with Luke. Now that the truth was out about his ancestry, Luke was going to get rid of him, too.

Behind him, Ben heard a clatter of shifting stone from the ruined hut. Luke was alive, Luke was coming to kill him, and at least some of the students were going to help. But what to do? He had to do something. He shoved Amyjav to the side, then threw out his hand with the Force at the others. For the first time in his life, he wasn't trying to focus his power through the lens of the light side, nor was he trying to throttle it at Luke's demand. He just let it out, letting it rush out of him with all his anger and fear strengthening it.

Brep blasted backward into the nearest hut and Ben collapsed the whole thing on him just like he had for Ben's own. Triski went as well a moment later, with Ben lashing out fast enough that no one else had reacted. They were all staring, stunned by the outbreak of violence in their midst and taken aback by the raw power Ben could unleash when he gave into the dark side. Triski was blown over the nearby stone wall, the back of her legs catching on it and her body tumbling over and behind it.

If it had been chaotic before, now it became a madhouse. Amyjav tried to pin Ben's arms to his side with the Force. It worked for a moment as Tre lunged at Ben, hands out and grasping. Lonnick let go of Juleen and leaped forward as well, but to Ben's defense. His sharp claws slashed through Tre's robes and bit into the delicate, thin skin Fondorians had. "Hands off!" Lonnick said. Tre cried out and let go.

"Stop this!" Juleen yelled, channeling her persuasive powers of the Force directly at Amyjav. It worked. Amyjav released Ben.

But while they were playing that out, Natlyn flung dozens of stones from the ruined hut Ben had propelled Brep into. The rocks pelted into all of them, but especially Ben, Tre, and Lonnick. Juleen and Amyjav pulled back to either side, shielding themselves. Those stones that hit thudded hard – the size of bricks and accelerated with supernatural power.

"We should … um … no?" said Elldal helplessly from the sidelines. His words were lost in the confusion.

Lonnick had been struck in the head with a stone. He wobbled unevenly. Ben went down to his knees from the barrage, clutching the side of his head. Tre had been hit in the body repeatedly. He reached down and grabbed one of Ben's shoulders – maybe for balance, maybe to seize him.

"I said hands off," Lonnick half-snarled, half-muttered. He swiped an uncoordinated, clawed hand carelessly across Tre's face and neck. Against another scaled Doshan, it would have been an annoying slap and maybe left scratches. Against a human, shallow cuts. But it laid Tre open. Blood spurted across Lonnick as Tre collapsed, reaching for his maimed throat. Lonnick stumbled back in shock, looking between his claws and Tre. Ben couldn't process any better. His head was still ringing. He had no experience of this sort of thing. Ben managed to scramble back from the blood, but it still tainted him.

"Get him!" Natlyn yelled, running forward. Juleen moved to intercept her and for a moment, Natlyn tried dodging, then threw herself into the taller Juleen. They both went down in a scuffling heap in the dirt and grass – Juleen trying to grab her, Natlyn trying to get free.

Triski was back, attacking Juleen from behind and wrapping an arm around her neck. There was a flash of metal in her other hand. Ben didn't wait to see what it was. He blasted her against the nearest hut with enough power to buckle the stone. He felt the tremor in the Force – she had not survived that. But there was no time to mourn.

"Tre!" Amyjav summoned to her hand the nearest thing that passed as a weapon, aside from the plentiful rocks. It was a splintered beam of wood from Ben's hut. She used it as a spear as she lunged at Lonnick, who was still uncoordinated from being brained.

Lonnick tried to grab at the makeshift weapon, but Amyjav jabbed him in the chest repeatedly with it, penetrating his scales and drawing blood. He tripped over a loose stone and went down with her ramming it into his ribs. Even though he finally got both clawed hands around the wooden shaft, something cracked sickeningly in his body as the point of it sunk one inch after another into him. She leaned into it with all her might. "You killed him!" Amyjav snarled. "Murderer!" Lonnick gasped, struggling to say something he couldn't get out.

Next to them in the darkness, a smaller figure flared to life with a greenish, sickly hue. Stekaly, the youngest of them, had been the cause of the clatter of stone in Ben's destroyed hut. She held Luke's lightsaber and with a flick of her wrist, she cut the improvised spear apart. Amyjav, her support suddenly gone, fell forward into the saber blade. As dispassionately as it had cut wood, it sheared her body in two. The sections fell on Lonnick.

For a long moment, the only sound was the continuing buzz of the lightsaber. Stekaly was looking at it with a concerned, surprised expression. Shakily, Ben got to his feet. Natlyn began to scream. A moment later, the scream cut off and she slumped. Everyone looked at her except Juleen, who looked to Nera. She nodded thanks and put Natlyn on her back. Natlyn twitched slightly as though dreaming and struggling to wake.

Ben spared Stekaly a glance before he turned to Lonnick and helped him get to his feet. The Trandoshan was covered in blood and worse. His balance remained off, though whether that was emotional or physical was unclear. Stekaly still held Luke's lit saber.

"Give that to me," Ben said to her. He extended the hand not currently occupied with holding Lonnick steady.

His demand snapped her out of whatever fugue she'd been in. "It's not yours," Stekaly said. She backed up, holding the lightsaber up so everyone could see it. "He's there! Luke. Under the rock. This is proof. He was there with his lightsaber to kill one of us. Ben was telling the truth!"

Ben looked at the corpse at his feet, then turned to the others. "I have to leave. I caused this."

" _Luke_ caused this," Juleen corrected. She was looking at Elldal, whose eyes were big. He had done nothing the whole fight, but he'd witnessed everything. Juleen had always been a peace-maker, one who avoided conflict as much as possible. But Luke had tried to kill one of his students. She had found where she drew the line. "Whose side are you on?" she asked Elldal.

"Em … I … um …" Elldal couldn't find the words. He backed away, getting some distance. Juleen stared him down.

Ben felt another ripple in the Force as Brep expired within the ruins of the hut he'd been blasted into. He shuddered. Four people were dead now. He'd spent years with them. But they were gone, just like that. And his fault. He felt numb inside, frightened and yet still angry. So deeply angry. He was angry at Luke, at his mother for sending him here, and at Han for just _leaving_! Leaving. Maybe it was all he was good for. Ben let go of Lonnick and started toward the temple.

"Where are you going?" Lonnick asked. He took a few wobbling steps after Ben. He looked terrified.

"The aircar." Ben stopped to explain. "I know someone … someone who said if there was trouble, I could … be safe." He'd never told anyone about Snoke. It was too dangerous, especially with someone like Luke around. Ben was still wrapping his mind around how they'd fought on his side. They deserved something from him, but he didn't know what. The least he could do was get himself away from them so they wouldn't have to deal with all his family's issues.

Lonnick made his way to Ben's side. "I'm coming with you!"

"What? Why?" Ben asked.

"Because I killed Tre!" He sounded borderline hysterical. "You're not the only one Luke thought had too much dark in him. He couldn't stand me. If he's still alive and there's a purge, I won't make it. If he's not alive and they find me, _I won't make it!_ You know somewhere safe? I'm going, too."

Would Snoke welcome others? Was it allowed? Was it safe for _them_? Ben didn't know. He moved to sling an arm around the reptilian, helping him limp along the road. Luke's droid was in the pathway, beeping querulously at them. It was unclear how much the machine had seen.

"What about Stekaly?" Mozzick asked as Ben passed. "You have to take her, too. She has nowhere to go. You can't just leave her. She killed Amy."

"It was an accident," Ben said, but he looked back at her anyway. Stekaly clicked off Luke's lightsaber and moved to where Natlyn lay. She crouched next to her and studied her. If she had any concerns about her future, she wasn't showing it. There was no doubt she could hear every word being said about her. Whereas Ben had been called a monster, she had come here with the label of 'animal' – detached, antisocial, half-feral. She'd never accepted Luke as her master in any capacity.

"Yeah," Lonnick said, "mine was an accident, too. But no one's going to believe a Trandoshan didn't just snap anymore than they will that the grandson of Darth Vader didn't kill a bunch of younglings."

Ben shuddered at the comparison. Everyone knew what Darth Vader had done.

"I believe you," Juleen said. "I believe both of you. If you're leaving, then I'm going, too."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Ben said.

"Neither did you," she told him. Ben blinked at her, unable to reconcile that.

Mozzick said, "I think we're past the point of dividing this into right and wrong. We're _all_ going. What are we going to do here? Live in the ruins until Luke digs himself out and asks us why we didn't stop you? Or until the authorities get here and start asking questions we can't answer? None of us can stay. This is over." The four of them looked back at Elldal, who was the obvious stand-out. Nera, Stekaly, and Amasara were younglings. Elldal wasn't.

Elldal, from his vantage point, saw all four of them turn at once to look at him silently. Even Nera, who was still hiding behind the low stone wall, was staring at him. Stekaly raised her head, too. It must have looked like a pack of hounds sighting their prey. He wheeled and tried to run.

"Get him!" Ben said. He reached out with the Force to grab him, but it was tough to tell who did what. All Ben knew was that he wasn't alone in pouring power Elldal's way. Elldal stumbled and fell, his limbs refusing to cooperate. Stekaly had been near Natlyn, already halfway to Elldal. She rushed to him, making a final, graceful leap – unnecessary and showy. As she landed, she flicked on Luke's lightsaber and made a single flourishing slash with it, worthy of any holo-drama star swordsman.

Ben and Juleen gasped. Even Mozzick said, "No!" None of them had expected that.

Lonnick said, "Well. _That_ wasn't an accident."

"No," Juleen said with a catch in her throat. "It wasn't."

Stekaly stood and turned off the blade. She hardly looked at the body. She walked back to them and even in the darkness, they could see her rage. She stared daggers at them. "No?" she called out to them. "You tell me 'no' after knocking him down for me? You tell me 'no' after I've killed him? When did you decide we weren't getting rid of all the witnesses and leaving together?" She stopped next to Natlyn's sleeping form. Fury was on Stekaly's face. "When were you going to tell me I wasn't part of the group who gets to go hide somewhere safe, because I did what you know had to be done?"

Lonnick spoke in as loud a voice as he could manage. "You saved my life. You're one of us."

"Prove it then! Kill her," she gestured at Natlyn, "in front of me. I want to see one of you actually do it and not just throw them into a building and pretend you didn't do it on purpose."

Lonnick started forward, but Ben stopped him. "This is about me. I started this. I'll finish it." Caspire took a step closer to help support Lonnick as Ben walked toward Stekaly.

"Finish it how?" Mozzick asked under his breath, but Ben didn't answer. Mozzick trailed Ben by a few steps.

Ben walked to her with a slow and steady tread. He stopped on the other side of Natlyn. He didn't ask for Luke's lightsaber, but instead took his own from his belt. He looked down at Natlyn as she twitched in her slumber. Nera was keeping her insensate. Mozzick had come to his right. Stekaly stood in front of him on the other side of Natlyn. No one spoke.

They all knew Natlyn was not an innocent. She was the one who had thrown the stones, in retaliation for Force-pushing Triski the first time. But she was defenseless now. Harmless. Killing her was a black act. Ben turned the lightsaber slowly, rotating it in his hand until the blade would point downward at her.

Killing Natlyn was on par with Stekaly killing Elldal. Kaly might be able to claim accident or misunderstanding on the two people she'd ended, but she never would and Ben knew that. What she was asking for – what Lonnick had asked him for as well – was solidarity. They had blood on their hands because of him and because of what he was – tainted and damaged, just like them.

Ben swallowed roughly and looked at Stekaly. Her face was drawn and tense, uncertain that he'd actually carry through. Her short lifetime had been full of people fearing her, hating her, trying to control her, and leaving her when they couldn't. No one had ever stood with her on her terms.

Ben twitched when he depressed the button and his blue lightsaber flared to life. Mozzick grunted, but he didn't stop it and didn't say anything. Natlyn gasped and her eyes flew open. Ben sliced his blade to the side, making sure it was a quick death. He snapped it off.

"Now we get away," Stekaly said. She dropped Luke's lightsaber next to Natlyn's body. "I want nothing of his, not ever again. It's just us now."

"Just us," Ben echoed.


	3. Fall into Darkness

**A/N: Make-shift passengers on a cargo ship headed to the Unknown Regions.**

* * *

"I didn't want to come with you!" Amasara said in a vicious tone. "I didn't want any of this to happen at all!"

Juleen sighed. Sara had wedged herself into an access space, hidden away from the rest as they smuggled themselves from one side of the galaxy to the other. It wasn't a safe place to be, but Amasara was eleven. She could get herself into spaces the adult Juleen couldn't. The food bar Juleen had tried to use to lure her out was midway between them, ignored for now.

Juleen said, "None of us wanted it to happen. Trust me. None of us laid awake in our beds praying and begging for this to happen. But it happened anyway. We have to accept things as they are."

"No, I don't! What good is the Force if it doesn't allow you to change things?"

"Sometimes I wonder, Sara. Sometimes I wonder." She was tired and it came out in her voice. Her whole world had been shaken, as it had been for all of them. Their very foundations had cracked and shifted. She wasn't sure what was solid ground anymore.

"Luke is our master! We can't run away from him! He's not a bad guy like his father was!"

Juleen grimaced. "Luke is a good person. We both know that."

"There had to be a mistake! A misunderstanding! If we just go back, we can fix it."

"Ben …" And here, Juleen winced, trying to blot out the image of Ben Solo stabbing the lightsaber down into the chest of helpless, harmless Natlyn. "Ben is also a good person. Of course there was a mistake. But we can't go back."

"Yes, we can!"

"Luke tried to kill him. We-"

"So Ben can't go back, but the rest of us could!"

"Ben needs our help. Luke is too powerful for him to face alone. Our only chance is to hide and learn as much as we can and stick together. All of us."

"All of _you_. Not me! I wasn't part of it. I didn't even see anything. Let me go back. I'll tell him not to come after you. Just let me go. I didn't want to come with you!"

Juleen sighed for the umpteenth time. "Luke tried to kill one of his students. How do I know you'll be safe with him? How do we know Ben was the only one he was planning to kill that night?"

"It's because of that Darth Vader stuff! Everyone knows that! It doesn't have anything to do with anyone but Ben."

"Maybe. But Luke is Vader's son as much as Ben is his grandson. If there's dark in Ben because of that, then there must be more inside of Luke. Have you ever thought of that?"

Amasara stared at her. "But Master Luke …"

"He's our master, yes. None of us have seen into his soul. But you've seen what he's done, right? How he treated anyone who asked the wrong sort of questions about the dark? How impatient he was with Stekaly and Nera?"

"I don't like them, either. I'm eleven and I act way better than they do. I actually study and do what I'm told. They get into trouble all the time!"

Juleen smiled thinly at her. "That's true. But. I can't let you go back to Luke because I can't trust him. Every one of us has had dark thoughts. Some have done dark things. I don't know what he'd do."

"I won't get anyone in trouble. I won't tell him anything. He doesn't have to know."

Juleen rolled her eyes. "He tried to kill Ben. He's not going to stop. He thought that was the right thing to do. He's always told us – Jedi never give up. They don't stop. They do whatever it takes to do the right thing. He's going to come after us and if you're with him, he'll read your mind without you even knowing."

Amasara was quiet for a moment. Her voice was shaking when she said, "Then I have to get away so he won't kill me, too. When he finds you. I can't be here."

"Do you think you'd be safe on your own? Do you think he wouldn't find you and use you against us? Do you think you could shield your mind from him without us around to do it for you?"

The child had no answer.

"Come out," Juleen begged. "Eat something. Rest. Ben says we have a long way before we get to a protected place." She pushed the food bar a little closer.

"I don't want to go to some … protected place! It won't be any safer there than where we were!" With a snarl, Amasara shoved the food bar away. It tumbled out of the accessway and fell to the floor. Juleen picked it up and replaced it at the edge of the tunnel. Amasara looked at it and used the Force to throw it in Juleen's face with an angry wave of her hand.

Exasperated at being struck, Juleen grabbed it and turned away, moving to the side so nothing else could be flung at her. She looked at the rest of them, all sleeping as far as she could see. Ben was sitting on the bench next to Mozzick. Stekaly was curled in Ben's lap. His arms were around her securely as though she were his child. His head was lolled to the side and his chest moved in deep, measured breaths.

Beside him, Mozzick sat with Nera curled under his arm, clinging to him like the ape-child she was. She was the same age as Amasara, but it was hard to tell with her being so limited in speech. She'd said nothing since the incident, not even mentally. Nera had used her ability to stop some of the fighting, but that was it.

They couldn't leave the kids behind for Luke to find, to train against them, to send against them later. Even assuming they'd be safe in his company. Juleen didn't know what had happened to make Master Luke turn on Ben, but there was no reason to think he might not turn on the rest of them. Especially now that they were all implicated by helping Ben.

Mozzick was only feigning sleep. He caught her eye and jerked his chin in the direction of their last member: Lonnick. He was curled on the floor on his side, probably trying to conserve body heat. Although he knew tricks with the Force to withstand the cold, he didn't look to be using them. Maybe he was too tired. He was still naked, as he'd been since the night before. Even after all these hours, his scales were still spattered with blood from at least two of their fellow students. For whatever reason, he had not cleaned himself.

Juleen replaced the food bar in the emergency kit they'd taken from the temple. She extracted a heat reflective blanket, shiny on one side and matte on the other. She went to Lonnick and unfolded the blanket. He stared up at her with a dazed expression. "That won't help me." There was no heat to reflect for a cold-blooded reptile.

"It will help _me_ ," Juleen said. "And I will help _you_." She laid down next to him on the hard floor, curling her body around his and covering them both with the blanket. "Why aren't you using the Force to keep warm?"

"I have no Force," he said lethargically. "Not since … Tre."

"The Force left you?"

"The light of the Force has left me."

She swallowed apprehensively. "The dark?"

"Is here."

She felt tears burn at her eyes. "You've fallen?" she asked, no louder than a faint whisper. This wasn't something for the ears of Amasara if she was listening, or Mozzick just a few feet away. She felt the small nod Lonnick made. "Oh, Lonnick," she breathed. He'd always made such fun of the stereotype of his species – they were aggressive, dangerous brutes whereas he was an urbane, sophisticated comedian who loved to upset people's expectations. Only to find when push came to shove, he was a killer just like those he'd mocked.

They had a very long journey ahead of them. They would get through it together, somehow. She wrapped herself closer.


	4. Masking the Ruin

**A/N: They're still on the freighter, in route to the Unknown Regions.**

* * *

"Someone has to be in charge," Stekaly insisted.

"No one has to be in charge," Juleen answered.

"No one _is_ in charge," Mozzick put in.

"Then send me back," Amasara said. They all looked at her, where she was sitting apart from the rest, still sulking. "If no one's in charge of me, then I'm going back."

Mozzick turned to the rest. "Someone has to be in charge," he said, keeping a straight face.

Stekaly didn't, though, and snickered. She said to Amasara, "What do you even want to do back there, anyway? It was a boring-"

"No," Juleen interrupted. "Leave it. We've talked about it. It's done. We've left. We're going to stick together. We're going to help each other. If we need someone technically in charge, like the primary person who speaks for us or something, then that's fine. But we're making group decisions here."

Stekaly smirked at both Amasara and Juleen, but said nothing. She looked pleased with herself.

"You're the oldest," Lonnick said, gesturing at Juleen.

Stekaly shook her head. "We're all here because of him." She pointed at Ben. "He's said so, and it's true. He's in charge."

"I'm not in charge," Ben said quietly.

"It's not a bad idea," Juleen said. "You're the one who knows this Snoke person. You're the one who's going to be recognized. Just about everyone in the galaxy knows the Skywalker name. Half of them know Solo. If anyone is able to speak for us and gain some instant respect, it's going to be you. No one fears the Nakk name." Nakk being Juleen's family name.

"I don't think we should be telling anyone who we are," Ben said.

"Not publicly," Juleen agreed.

"We could come up with secret names!" Stekaly said with excitement. "I was already thinking we needed a group name, something that sounded cool. Something dangerous and dark and true! So, hear this: the Knights of Ruin!"

"Huh," Mozzick said. Everyone else just looked on, thinking it over.

"Right?" Stekaly said, still excited as no one had shot it down yet.

Lonnick said, "We do kind of need a group name, something better than 'those guys'."

"We could be the Brothers Ick and Company," Mozzick said. The Brothers Ick were what he and Lonnick had been nicknamed due to the coincidence of their names. Juleen Nakk was occasionally included as an honorary Akk/Ick.

Juleen snorted a laugh. "No. Anything but that. Knights of Ruin sounds … a little dark. But I like the Knights part."

"No Ruin!" Amasara said vehemently and suddenly. "I will not call myself that!"

All of the adults exchanged looks at the implication that Amasara had an opinion on their group name, and by extension was willing to be part of the group. Juleen asked, "Do you have a suggestion?"

"I don't know!" Amasara's voice turned angry. "Knights of Ben Solo or something. That's the only thing that makes sense."

"Huh," Mozzick said. Lonnick grinned at him.

"My name." Ben shook his head. "No. Not my name."

"Knights of Ru-en, then," Stekaly said.

"Knights of Ren," Lonnick said. "How's that?" He looked to Amasara.

"Okay."

Lonnick looked to Stekaly. "Good with you?"

She shrugged. "That's what I said."

He looked to Ben. "And you?" He nodded. Lonnick looked between Mozzick and Juleen. "Anyone else care?" They made agreeable motions. "Then we are now the Knights of Ren! Three cheers! Huzzah … huzz… ah, you guys." He chuckled. No one had joined him in cheering, but he'd expected that.

"We should come up with secret names for ourselves, too," Stekaly said. "I don't want to be Stekaly. I'm going to make up my own name!"

Juleen said, "That might be a good idea."

Ben said, "Yeah. I'm not going to go around as Ben Solo in the open."

"We need names to call each other when others are around," Juleen said.

Mozzick said, "Isn't that the opposite of a secret name?"

"Yeah," Lonnick said. "It's like a public name. A mask. You know, masks wouldn't be a bad idea, either. Facial recognition is pretty simple tech."

Mozzick chortled. "They don't even need that. I mean, how many other groups of three adult humans, a lizard guy, an ape kid, and two human kids are out there? They don't need to see our faces."

Ben cocked his head, looking at Lonnick's profile. "With a good helmet and a little armor, no one will know you're not human." He looked over at Nera. "Same with her. She's already tall for her age."

Stekaly said, "I want to be called Jophesta – Jophesta Ren, after the librarian!" They looked at her blankly. She said, "You know, the one Luke talked about? The one who fought Darth Vader and destroyed the Jedi records rather than letting all that stuff go into the Empire's hands?"

Ben realized who she meant and said, "Her name was Jocasta Nu. Not Jophesta."

"I know that! But I want to be called Jophesta. I'm not her. I'm just named after her. Obi-Wan Ben-Soloni-Pon. The name doesn't have to be exact."

"She's got you there," Mozzick said with a grin.


	5. The Grass was not Greener

**A/N: The trip to the Unknown Regions took most of the intervening time, so that by the time of this chapter, they've only seen Snoke in person for a few days. He's still assessing their skills. By this time, they have settled on their new names and loose group identity as the Knights of Ren (or, as Stekaly/Jophesta wanted to call them 'the Knights of Ruin').**

* * *

"Good, good," Snoke crooned. He was leaning forward in his seat, his eyes avidly following the flips and leaps Jophesta was demonstrating before the small assemblage. She was especially fearless with the Force as her ally, giving her greater height and cushioning her landings. She rolled, tumbled, and twisted with the gymnastic skill of a professional and the grace of a dancer. "Excellent," Snoke beamed as she finished. Her head was held high as she tried not to smile as much as she clearly wanted to.

Jo was not even nine, still a youngling. It made Caspire's heart swell to see her finally getting the praise she so desperately craved. Luke had withheld it. He was cranky with her, trying to teach unruly teenagers the fine points of control while Jo scampered in the background, asking intentionally annoying questions and trying to prank people. She had little idea of manners or proper behavior to start with and no respect at all for authority figures. Her use of the Force, as a child without guidance, had allowed her to overpower the others in her life until she'd been dumped on the Academy doorstep. Luke had never wanted her to be his student, but he couldn't simply turn her out.

Snoke, though, was different. "I am pleased to have one so talented as yourself among the Knights of Ren, and at such a young age. I would not have expected any of Skywalker's pupils to have this capability. But even the Jedi knew it was best to begin training young." Snoke cast his eyes over to Kylo, which didn't make sense unless it was insulting. Kylo had been years older than Jo when Luke had started the academy. The knights, as they were assembled, were garbed simply for their assessment - no helmets or armor had yet been issued to them. Snoke wanted to see what they could do before he decided how to proceed.

"The next of you," Snoke said. "Tonza. Step forward. Do better than your companion and you will impress me indeed."

This was not likely to happen. Caspire's momentary pleasure at Jo's success passed. Like Caspire, Tonza's skills with the Force had never lent themselves to physical mastery. Also, she was the most broken of them after the burning of the temple. She hadn't wanted to come with them, but neither Kylo nor Steel would leave behind an eleven year old child in the flaming ruins, surrounded by corpses. The two of them took her by force, screaming and flailing her disagreement. She had promised vengeance on behalf of Luke and the other students. Caspire had eventually managed to talk her down.

It seemed like a long time ago. Reaching Snoke had taken weeks of travel, the Unknown Regions being insulated from the rest of the galaxy by having no direct hyperspace lanes. Tonza had made some small degree of peace with the other knights, but she still didn't want to be here. Her lack of enthusiasm had something to do with her failure to perform adequately. She tried a few basic rolls and somersaults. They were uncoordinated and sloppy.

Snoke made a displeased face. "You can do better," he said. She tried one of the flips Jophesta had done, but without the Force augmenting her, she crashed heavily. Snoke made a disgusted growl and shot a glare at Kylo. "You have brought me an incompetent." Tonza rose with a limp and tried again, though she had not been bid to do so. She kept trying with a sullen determination, eyes cast down, shoulders drawn in. She hurt herself at least twice more. Then she landed better. Caspire had to wonder if her wrath had given her focus.

Snoke had noticed as well. "Continue," he said sharply. Tonza nodded once and tried another whirl and twist. Despite her earlier failures, she seemed to have gotten the hang of it. Then Casp noticed something. Kylo was watching Tonza intently and moving his hand at his side. She tilted her head. He was doing something.

Snoke had realized the same. "Foul play!" Snoke shouted with sudden fervor. Lightning erupted from the hand he flung out. The bolt shot Kylo, hitting him in the chest and knocking him down. Everyone jumped. Steel, who had been standing next to Kylo, yelped at being hit by an unexpected arc of the stuff and leaped away. He batted at his arm where the fabric was smoking.

Kylo convulsed once on the floor, making no sound. Caspire's eyes were huge. She wondered if he'd been killed. He was definitely unconscious, or at least insensible. Tark laughed twice and right away, as though seeing one of their own get blasted to the floor was a good joke. The rest were silent. Steel shot Tark a threatening look and balled a fist. Steel shifted his weight like he was about to strike Tark, but was distracted by a cough from Kylo.

"Jophesta," Snoke said, "come forward and show Tonza how it is to be done."

Jophesta walked forward with more caution than she'd had before. She watched as Kylo picked himself up, composed himself, and turned to face Snoke. His features were blank and receptive, showing mild interest in whatever Snoke had to impart. Jo nodded to herself and went through a basic floor routine, an assortment of moves someone without the Force should be able to duplicate, if they had practiced. Tonza had not – although Luke had drilled them on physical education, he'd never put great emphasis on it, referring to it as a quick and incomplete way of knowing the Force. Tonza watched with trepidation.

Snoke sneered. "I see you have limited your effort to that which a stumblebum might accomplish. On her behalf, because we've all seen you are capable of more. What sort of a knight is she if she requires the help of her teammates? She drags all of you down to her level of uselessness."

Jophesta gave a small shrug.

Snoke leaned forward. "I should have you kill Tonza and become my primary apprentice. What would you think of that?"

Jophesta looked at Tonza guardedly. They sized each other up. They didn't like each other to start with. The rest of the group were looking at each other, trying to gage who would do what if Snoke ordered it. This was their new home. Snoke was protecting them from Luke. He had the whole First Order on his side if they tried to fight him, as well as his own mastery of the Force. They were just students, some of them not even adults. Jo turned back to Snoke, her eyes narrowed and calculating. "What would happen to Kylo?"

"That is a good question! Very insightful. What do you think should happen to Kylo?"

Jophesta looked at him, sticking her chest out proudly like this was all a game – another rhetorical question and not a matter of life and death. She smiled. "I would have Kylo clean my shoes and bring me my meals. He could follow me around and do whatever I didn't want to do!" Jophesta had squabbled more with Luke over the menial chores he assigned than over anything else.

Snoke smiled. "Hm, yes. That would be amusing, wouldn't it?" He looked at Kylo. "What say you, Kylo Ren?"

"I will do as my master bids," he said promptly and without inflection to his voice. Caspire felt sorry for him. He'd said more than once that this was all his fault – not just the thing with Luke, but also every difficulty with Snoke, who was turning out to be far from the savior they'd hoped for.

Snoke turned from him. "Tark. Take this pathetic one out of my sight." He gestured at Tonza. "Have her practice until her performance resembles an actual Force user more than it does an incompetent jester. You may use whatever means of motivation you deem necessary. It will be a test for each of you."

Tark nodded to Snoke and headed toward Tonza. She turned on her heel and strode out ahead of him, her emotions so unbalanced that all of them knew she was on the verge of another breakdown. But at least she made it out of Snoke's chambers. The rest of them waited in silence.

"Caspire," Snoke said, turning his eyes to her.

She came forward and Jophesta cleared off, returning to her previous spot. Caspire took a longer run than the rest for this. She was athletic and in good health, but like Tonza, she had little ability in the Force to augment her body. She tried the flip using her natural physical ability. The landing was poor, ending on one knee and having to catch herself with an arm. As she'd seen with Tonza, the floor was punishingly hard. She returned to her starting position and tried again. This time, she landed better and used telekinesis to shove herself upright. She looked to Snoke.

"Once more." His voice was level.

Caspire did it again, this time stumbling but managing, after a stagger, to right herself.

Snoke gave a disinterested wave of his hand. Caspire returned to her place, thankful that was all he required of her. Kylo was the only one left, as Steel, Nera, and Tark had gone before Jo. Snoke's lips curled as he turned to Kylo. "I feel your wrath. Hmm," Snoke's eyes half-closed like he was savoring the finest drink. "I feel it simmering in your mind as you take issue with my dissatisfaction in the sorry state of your associates, with my lack of tolerance for failure and inadequacy. You were all … poorly trained. Even you, who struggle in vain to quell this rage. You should not. Let it consume you. Let it fuel you. You should learn to appreciate it for what it is. Consider it a gift that I bestow on you. Retire now and contemplate it while these other three continue their training."

Kylo breathed out hard. His upper lip twitched over slightly bared teeth. Whatever he was planning to do or say, he didn't get a chance. Snoke knocked him to the floor with Force lightning for a second time, then laughed at him. "Such defiance! I thought you had more intelligence than this. You have no options here, boy. Stoke your fury to an inferno, but you will show me respect."

Kylo picked himself up, keeping his eyes down. His mouth moved expressively as he bit back the objections that obviously wanted to spill out. Snoke waited with tilted head while Kylo schooled himself. Kylo said, "Yes, Master." His eyes flicked up to Snoke, who twitched his brows upward and made a slight shooing motion with one clawed hand. Kylo left.

Snoke turned to Jophesta, Caspire, Nera, and Steel. "Now, we shall move on to telekinesis. Jophesta, dear. Set the standard for these other lackwits to meet. And do show me your best work. You don't have to hold back here. None of these can touch you for anything you do. I will make sure of it."

Caspire breathed out hard much as Kylo had, but more quietly. Snoke was going to tear them apart – the fragile, familial bonds they had. She'd thought at first it was only a side-effect, but the more she saw of him, the more she sensed it was intentional. But there was no going back.


	6. Sentimental Fool

**A/N: Mild warning – discussion of disaster situation and famine, and the effects of such on infants, small children, the population in general, etc. Possible parasites and body horror.**

 **Contrast this Steel at the beginning of this chapter to Steel shooting a twelve year old without remorse in the chapter "Downplanet" of Pacification. This is set in the first year of his membership with the First Order and is a pivotal incident in developing his loyalty to and acceptance of the organization. It is also what starts him on the path of physically bulking up and seeing himself as a soldier.**

 **For more information on the larger situation surrounding this incident, read this, then check out the chapter "Charity Work" in Star Performer. This is set about six months after the Knights of Ren joined Snoke. (Or for those trying to sync up the timeline between Star Performer and the Knights of Ruin, it's about nine months after Hux met Snoke, or the Burning of the Temple.)**

From Pacification, "Words of Steel", chapter 3:

Steel said, "I'll tell you another story. I was on Lebeka when the famine had rolled in. I was with a slave harvesting ship. I had to shoot some people, adults, who were trying to pass themselves off as children because they knew we were going to feed the kids once we got them on those ships. They were starving. Eyes hollowed, ribs showing, skin cracking, crawling with lice, and with dretchy leeches hanging off some of them. Do you know what people smell like when they're starving?"

* * *

 _You think Snoke can hear us out here?_ Their shuttle had just left hyperspace and was closing with the _Finalizer._ They were in orbit over the larger of a binary planet system. Steel had been told these were the Downworlds, which were home to most of the Order's schools and training installations. There was a small fleet assembled for the mission.

 _I don't sense him,_ Juleen – now calling herself Caspire – told him mentally. They both looked different from their old identities as well – they were cloaked, armored, and helmeted as they had been for the last few months.

 _Listen, I have some doubts about this whole thing. The First Order? What are we even doing here?_

 _We're staying safe from Luke._

 _Yeah, but … at what cost? There's a civil war and a famine on this planet we're going to and these guys swoop in like a bunch of vultures? How much lower can you get? There's,_ Steel shifted his weight uneasily, _there's a point at which I'd rather go back and face Luke than work for, like, the Hutts or something. The bad guys. We're working for the bad guys here. I don't want to be a bad guy. Dark side of the Force or not. I'm not a bad guy._ He was still struggling with his sense of self following the turn.

 _I don't think it's that simple._

 _Yeah, but you don't_ _**know**_ , Steel insisted.

 _No one knows, Mozzick,_ she thought to him, still calling him by his old name in her head. _No one. Like Luke used to say, if they say they do, then they're selling you something._

 _I don't like this whole thing – taking advantage of a planetary disaster, sending warships headed by the guy leading their super-weapon development team? I mean, is that the best guy they could find for this job? The one in charge of making a big gun? Real humanitarian there._

Caspire shrugged. _We don't know anyone here – what they're like, what the options are._

 _And that's the problem._ He sighed. _I guess we'll find out._ He looked out the viewport as the _Finalizer_ loomed larger in it. _But I'll tell you this – if this mission involves shooting little kids and terrorizing starving people, then I'm going to start shooting up some uniforms. If the report's true, then Lebeka's a mess. We can steal a ship and get away easy if we need to._

Caspire didn't answer in words. Snoke still held the three children of their own group, ostensibly for 'training', but it looked a lot like holding them hostage for the good conduct of the rest of the knights. If she and Steel left, tried to, or even disobeyed, what would happen to Jophesta, Nera, and Tonza?

 _Kriff,_ Steel thought back. He sighed again. _I'm not going to shoot kids._

* * *

 _What did they do to themselves?_ Steel thought to her as they looked out the viewport. The planet they were heading to, Lebeka, loomed up in front of them. _I thought it was a desert planet at first glance._ The majority of the globe was a dull tan, interrupted by streaks of cream or grey. He'd realized that was cloud cover that they were dropping toward so quickly, buzzing past some orbital defense platform like it wasn't even there. _So much for stopping to check in,_ Steel thought.

 _You heard Snoke as well as I did: civil war followed by famine._

 _That announcement the colonel made this morning just said 'environmental disaster and famine'. Why did he leave off the bit about civil war? Did he not want to politicize it or something? Make it sound less dangerous?_

 _Why don't you go ask him?_ Caspire suggested. _He's right over there._

Steel didn't look. He knew. The orange-haired guy was obviously keeping tabs on them. As the person in charge, he could be in any transport he wanted (or have stayed behind to coordinate) and there were hundreds of vessels heading to the planet surface. But he'd chosen the one they were on. It wasn't a coincidence. _I don't want to ask him. He's one of them. He's spying on us. Can't you read his mind or something?_

 _I'm not going to read his mind for something that trivial,_ she scoffed.

 _Snoke said you could. He said we could use our judgment, do whatever we thought was right._

 _You know he's watching us on these missions as much as he's having us watch these guys, right? That colonel is probably going to report on us just like we're going to report on all this._

 _That's smart, I guess. Snoke seems friendly most of the time, but he's a bit creepy._

 _You think so?_ Caspire coughed to cover a hollow laugh. The ship shifted under them as the repulsors kicked in. Behind them, stacks and stacks of cargo creaked and settled. All the transports had been packed to the rafters in food. Steel didn't know if it was a gesture of good will, humanitarianism, payment for the kids, or just clearing up space aboard the destroyers. But it soothed his irritated morality to see the Order wasn't simply grabbing what they wanted and jetting.

It felt like they hit the ground rather than landing. He would have squawked at the pilot had he been anywhere close enough to be heard. Whoever was flying this boat must have seriously underestimated the weight of the cargo. Everything in the belly of the ship rattled and swayed dangerously. Steel stared up, wondering if he was about to die in a shipping accident, but nothing actually toppled. _That's weird,_ he thought. _If I didn't know both of us were crap at telekinesis, I'd say someone just stabilized that with the Force._

Caspire was frowning upward as well, though Steel could only see her expression as a reflection in her mind. _Maybe Snoke doesn't want us squashed. It would be tough to explain to the others._

 _You sense him?_

 _No. But it felt like something. Of course, we just landed on an entire planet of misery. Can't you feel it?_

 _Uh, no. That's what you're here for._

 _Well, I feel it._

Behind them, the doors opened and a dim, tainted light filtered in through the smoggy haze, followed by a faint, lingering stench of smoke and rot. _Oh, kriff,_ Steel thought. _I feel something. Even_ _ **I**_ _feel something. Something not good._

* * *

Food went out, infants came in.

"There's two in this one," Steel said, breaking his long silence to address Colonel Hux. They'd been working more or less together since Caspire had slipped out to gather information, observe, or whatever it was she was doing. Steel (and the colonel) were at the end of a chain of aid workers and troopers handing back infant carriers, bassinets, and in some cases just boxes and baskets. Each contained a baby. Usually a very unhappy baby, swaddled against the elements and often with supplies or personal possessions stowed in the container with them.

Some of these possessions were immediately tossed – anything that might get on top of a child or that someone along the line thought was dangerous in some manner ended in a growing heap on either side of the ramp. But in this particular carrier, the questionable extra item was a second baby.

The colonel came over and looked. He just stood there and stared at the infants with an intense expression, then said, "Well. Em. Just leave them together. They're fine." Steel hesitated. Hux added, "They're both … small. We don't have containers. Just leave them."

He was right; they were small. Most of the babies looked small, like their heads were too big. Some of them were gaunt. A few, Hux had sent back with a single angry word: _Reject_.

"Not a reject?" Steel asked.

"No, of course not. They look healthy." He started to turn away, then turned back. "I suppose you need an explanation, for Snoke?"

"Yeah," Steel lied.

"I'm rejecting the ones I'm not positive will make it. Or that look ill. They have to survive several days of transit and handling with an untrained, understaffed crew tending them. There are enough that we can be picky and I'm not going to endanger the rest by taking on obvious problems. We save more this way. Do you understand?"

Steel made a single nod. It sounded callous, but it was triage.

Hux paused for a moment, considering his words. "They have medical facilities here on Lebeka. And doctors. Without the rest of these, they'll be able to care better for the ones they have left. Or at least, I hope so. For their sake." The colonel went back to work, muttering to himself about corrupt Republic scum getting what was coming to them someday, sooner rather than later.

Steel, also, went back to work. They were nearly done as far as this shipment went. Floorspace was running out and things were being rearranged to pack in just a few more refugees. He really hadn't raised his head to look until now, but as he did, he realized how boggling it was. Where there had been towers of huge, sealed food containers, there was now a sea of small, open containers with blankets and squalling children.

The number was the hard thing to get his brain around. How could so many people be in such desperate straits that they'd give up their children? Because he'd seen the other end of the human chain and it was aid workers, he assumed, but they definitely weren't handing over their kids at the end of a blaster. They were organized. Some of them wore colored tunics emblazoned with emblems that he was sure meant something to the people here. This was being done openly. It was aboveboard and with the cooperation of the people. They'd flown right past orbital defense platforms and had not a shot fired at them.

Hearing the ramps come up, he turned back to the entrance. A last carrier was put his hands to him to figure out a place for it. The place was packed. There wasn't room for any but the most agile to get around, but that was by design. The ship was taking off by the time Steel found a space he could wedge the carrier into a spot, which was the first time he'd looked inside it. "Oh, come on!" There were three in it.

One was bigger than the other two, who were squirming and fussing to have a baby twice their size laid atop them. He lifted out the older baby, her blankets loosening and unfurling behind her. "Kriff. Wait, I didn't say that. You didn't hear it." He looked around at the bassinets. "None of you guys heard that. I shouldn't be saying bad words around you guys."

He struggled with the wrappings until he realized he could simply hold the kid up and use the Force to drag the end of the fabric back around it, draping as needed. He smiled inside his helmet. "There." By that point, though, she'd had enough of being held up at arm's length and began to wail. "Healthy lungs. Great. Come here." He held her closer, tucking her in, and the abject wailing died down to mere sobs.

"Hey, baby. I've got another trick. I wonder if it would work on you?" He could calm animals and sometimes control them as long as they weren't too motivated to disobey. He'd never had any luck with intelligent creatures, but he'd never tried it on a baby. "We're all just animals, right?" He focused, concentrated, and slowly increased the ability. Nothing seemed to change. She kicked her legs and began to cry harder.

"Okay, that's not working." He held her against him, shifting her position and trying to sooth her. With both of his arms around her, she calmed again. "Oh," he cooed. "I've figured it out. You need to be wrapped up tight, don't you? That's what all this is about." He snugged up the blanket around her and she finally quieted, just as he felt the ship touch down (more gently this time; someone had evidently given the pilot an earful) in an unfamiliar hangar bay.

Steel turned to see a small congregation of First Order members gathered on the other side of where the ramp would descend, watching him curiously. They looked away when he looked their way. He supposed it was a strange scene – scary, black-clad Knight of Ren cooing and cuddling a baby. The ramp descended.

Outside was a legion of caretakers or troopers impressed into service as caretakers. Armor had been dispensed with for those aboard ship. They came flooding up the ramp as soon as the order was given. The baby was snatched from his arms and hustled away without so much as a 'thank you'. Faster than he would have believed possible, the ship was emptied, more sealed containers of food were loaded (although not so many this time), the ramp was up, and they were taking off.

He wandered over to the colonel, as he was the only other person Steel had spoken with. He wasn't sure where Caspire had gotten off to, but the ship had a dozen compartments and Steel wasn't worried about her. "That didn't look like the _Finalizer_."

"It wasn't. It was the _Absolution_. That's the usual ship I took out on harvesting missions. They have the best trained personnel for this. Shipments of infants get routed here."

"Oh. I won't see the baby anymore." He felt a little let-down at that. He'd ended up taking care of the kids at Luke's academy, but they'd been younglings by the time they were at Luke's. His brother and sister had been too close to him in age for him to recall much about helping take care of them when they were tiny. He was sure he had, but that was two lifetimes ago.

Hux gave him an odd look, almost a smile. "No. But there will be more. We'll be at this all day. Maybe all night. We'll stop when we hit capacity or performance starts suffering. Hopefully, we'll hit capacity first and be out of here."

"You don't like doing this?"

"I never said that. If we do not intervene, they will starve. They are already starving. Someone has to do something."

"That matters to you?"

"Yes. It does." Hux's voice hardened and he turned to face Steel. "You can tell Snoke this is the messy reality of where the First Order comes from – why we exist. These people are _our_ people. Everyone we remove from the system strengthens us _and_ them. We have a new member; they don't have to provide resources maintaining that person until they're of productive age. Every person we bring into the Order is living proof of the moral and functional failure of the New Republic. This is what we're fighting against. This is how we fight it."

"Not by blowing things up with that big gun you're building?"

"There will come a time when that big gun will end the New Republic and the war, once and for all. Snoke knows that as well as I do. I know he had his reservations about this mission as unnecessary. Tell me – do you think it was unnecessary for that child you held?"

Steel shrugged. The guy seemed to be itching for a fight Steel wasn't interested in engaging in, so he sauntered away, letting the colonel calm his jets as they dropped back into atmosphere for round two.

* * *

Steel did not have much proficiency with the Force, but there was one aspect of it that had come to him naturally. It was the ability to understand people regardless of language and to make himself understood right back. It had come to him so easily that when Nera began to verbalize, he'd been confused as to why no one else understood her. It wasn't until he started replying to her in Shifala, a language he didn't know, that Luke realized what was going on. He'd been impressed. Steel cherished that memory.

At the moment, though, he wished he didn't have the ability. They'd landed on the nightside of Lebeka on what Colonel Hux had announced would be their last run. Most of the First Order personnel were obviously dead on their feet with exhaustion and he knew everyone had taken a round of stims with the last meal break, hours ago. Steel had no idea how long they'd been working, but the job had been getting harder every trip. Tiny infants had given way to wobbly toddlers who were replaced, a few trips later, by young children.

Also, the crowds had been less organized each drop. The orderly human chains passing bassinets and carriers had disappeared when the children were too mobile to be kept so confined. They were herded. They were confused. They were too young to know what was going on. Most looked sickly. Some were apathetic. The very worst were rejected.

Right before the ramps had been put down, Hux had announced that only children with purple dye on their head or face were to be allowed on. No information was given on how these children had been selected over others – just that somewhere, someone planetside had set up criteria, prescreened the intake, and prioritized. The people who had gathered knew this, just as they knew many of their own children weren't allowed.

That was why he wished he didn't understand. Once their cargo was unloaded, Steel was shoved out in front of the ramp with his blaster rifle and a score of bucketheads. Steel gathered they were under the impression he was their commanding officer. If only they knew. The crowds were unruly. People yelled questions at the staff. They called out last good-byes to the preschoolers headed up the ramp, properly anointed with their purple splotch. Some of them wailed and carried on inarticulately even to Steel's ears. (His ability did not make sense of the babbling of babies or the slurring of the inebriated, but it did fine with stuttering or speech impediments.)

It also did fine with the native language of Lebeka. He had been unwise enough, apparently, to yell back at them, because now they kept directing their inquiries to him. He tried to give them orders. He tried to tell them to stay back. There were people holding up their skinny babies and emaciated toddlers, crying for them to be taken as well. They knew was the last ship out. It was heart-wrenching. He'd seen so many kids transported today that Steel would have believed, several trips ago, that they were full up. He knew there were hundreds of other ships involved, all making the same pickup after pickup. How they were stowing all these people on the ship was a mystery.

So he completely understood the announcement about the dye. He understood they couldn't take everyone. But he wished they could. These particular people had some kind of parasite on them that created dark polyps or maybe that was the parasite's body hanging from their face or on the back of their hands. He wondered why they didn't pull them off. He would have thought it a skin growth, but he'd seen people at other places. These were the worst off he'd seen yet – disorganized, starving, desperate.

A woman who was no more than sticks and belly came up to him with a girl, begging him, "Please, sir, this is my daughter, Natisi. She is the only child I have left. She must go. You can see she is clean. I have cleaned her. She is ready. She wants to explore the galaxy. Don't you, Natisi?" The girl nodded uneasily, watching the woman for cues. The girl was thin as well, but not cadaverous like the woman. The woman's eyes burned with a feverous intensity.

"Ma'am, you need to get back."

"We missed the deadline, but they only announced it to certain districts. You can see, she is very young. She is clean. She wants to go with you."

"No, ma'am, you and she need to get back." Steel gestured at one of the bucketheads, who stepped over and took the woman by the arm. The troopers didn't understand a word of what Steel or the woman were saying, but they knew the motion.

"No! Please!" She tried to fall to her knees, but was so light the trooper was able to hold her up. She grabbed the edge of Steel's cloak, gripping it in bony fingers. "She is my everything! Please take her! She will die here! She will die here!" The trooper tried to pry her fingers loose and she let such a shriek that Steel wondered if she'd broken a finger.

He waved off the trooper. "Never mind. Leave it!"

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" the woman cried out. "You will be blessed. Oh! Thank you!"

"I didn't …" But she had fallen in front of him now that the trooper had released her. She touched her hands reverently to Steel's knees.

"She is my everything! After I lost my son, every day I give her my portion. Every day. She must live. I want her to live. Go!" She jabbed the girl in side of the thigh, then reached up to push her back. The girl scooted past Steel and hurried up the ramp.

He thought, again, how he hadn't actually given permission, but he couldn't find it in himself to stop her. He knew it was unfair to everyone else standing in the crowd with their own offspring, nearly all of which were younger than the girl was. As far as that went, the girl was probably the oldest he'd seen let aboard. She was tall and thin and reminded him of Amasara – another reason he didn't stop her.

The woman withdrew from him, tried to rise, failed, and fell to her side just two steps from him. She looked dead, as though now that her daughter had a future, she could finally pass on. When Steel heard the girl scream behind him, he initially thought it was because she'd looked back and seen her mother's collapse.

He turned his head. No. The girl was in the hands of that orange-haired asshole, who looked furious. And she was screaming in despair because unlike the others they were evacuating she was old enough to understand what it meant if he sent her out of the ship. Her mother had promised she'd die if she didn't get on the ship. With a snarl that was unseen due to his helmet, Steel boiled up the ramp. His body language said enough and his tone if that didn't work. "I said she could go! Let her go!"

"She's too old! She's not even marked. What do you think you're doing?"

"I am using the authority Snoke granted me! Let her go!" He wished he could do the mind trick some of the others could, but he had his doubts about it working on this guy anyway. It would be better if he had something specific he could threaten Hux, but nothing came to mind right away. He had nothing, really, other than Snoke's name and a blaster. And his anger. The dark side.

"You can't do this!" the colonel told him.

"Yes, I can!" Steel got in his face, wishing he was bigger and more intimidating. The colonel was too tall.

Hux glared at him. They had a few long seconds of stand-off before the colonel said, "One. If you bring another, you're staying in their place. We can only take so many!" But he let the girl go. She scurried into the ship, dodging another Order person who tried to grab her. Hux turned, "Leave her! Continue operations! We're going to lose the crowd soon."

Steel started back down the ramp. Hux called to him, "You! Knight!" Steel looked back. The unimpressed expression on his face was invisible, but he supposed it was what he deserved for never having introduced himself. Hux said, "Keep the line protected! You've started a riot."

He turned back and took a moment to look. Hux was right, although so far, it was just noise as a wave of information was passed back and forth in the crowd. Someone had broken the rules. Someone had been let on who shouldn't have. The troopers saw it, too. They pulled back, tighter around the base of the ramp that properly marked children were still filing up – the aid workers bringing them that far and then turning them over to the Order who shepherded them up the rest of the way.

The noise was rising. The crowd was moving forward, yelling back and forth at one another chaotically, at Steel and the troopers. He might have been able to understand the language, but he really couldn't catch most of what was being called out. It was too mixed. He took his place next to the line of those still loading properly.

But the crowd was moving in, hungry and angry, and Steel couldn't find it in himself to order the troopers to fire on them. He tried yelling for the people to back up, but they were unimpressed. A man whose face was puckered with those disgusting, dangling parasites tried to put a baby in his arms but Steel refused to take it. He shoved the man back. The baby fell. Although Steel cushioned its fall somewhat with what limited telekinesis he had, it still looked like he'd dropped a baby on the ground. Bad optics.

Two other people mobbed him, one of them screaming obscenities he, again, would have preferred not to understand. As they came forward, he stepped forward over the infant and hit the first one with the butt of his rifle. The other was jerked away from him and thrown to the ground by one of the troopers. After that, he gave the order to fire. The rest dispersed with cries and howls. Someone in the crowd had a blaster and fired two shots at them, but Steel didn't get a good look at them and they didn't hit anything anyway. Even rioting, the people didn't want to kill them – they just wanted their children and perhaps themselves to be taken away from the hellhole this planet had turned into.

The overhead lights turned off, leaving them with only the lights from the ship.

The colonel yelled for them to pull out and a few seconds later, the same signal came over his comm. Steel waited as the next score or so of aid workers rushed their charges to the ramp all at once, not wanting to miss their chance. He bent and retrieved the baby, who had been crying at his feet the whole time. It had weird bumps on its skin, but looked otherwise fine. He wrapped the blanket tighter around it and handed it off to the trooper next to him.

"Sir?" the trooper asked.

"Take that one up with you." He moved over and jerked a man out of line who was trying to pass up the ramp. "Hey! What are you doing?"

"I'm, I'm, You're not taking all the kids. There's room."

The pull-back signal chimed in his ear again. He both loved and hated these helmets. Steel shook his head. "There's no room for adults. Stay here." He pushed him away and started backing up the ramp. His troopers were already further up. Then he saw two women trying to hide behind the last batch of kids. They were short, but not that short. It would have been comical if it were not so sad.

These two were gaunt and when he jerked them away from the kids, one insisted, "No! I am five. Just big. See? I have the purple mark."

She had a smear on her – he'd give her that – but she was twenty-five before she was five. And she might be double that. He really couldn't tell in the poor lighting, her with dirt and stuff on her face, and so shriveled with long-term hunger that it hurt to look at her.

"You can't go."

The man returned to dog him. "No! There's room! See? You're leaving early. Just turn and look. There's room. They're waving at us!" And all this while the crowd was baying and restless, surging erratically as people tried to work up the nerve to close in. Steel could hear someone in the back of the crowd yelling about distributing blasters, which was weird. Where the hell had they gotten blasters and why were they only now passing them out? All he understood was that they needed to get out of here.

Steel finally turned to look where the man was pointing. No one was waving. Having the high ground on the angled ramp, the troopers had fallen into a disciplined, stacked two-level formation, rifles leveled at the crowd. It was the only reason Steel hadn't been mobbed. All three of the people he was trying to detain tried to dodge past him as he was distracted. The man was wiry and stronger than the others who'd thrown themselves on Steel earlier. Those two had been so weakened they could only grab uselessly. But this guy was stronger. Somewhere, he'd been getting enough food.

Steel shoved him and the man rolled a few feet down the ramp before catching himself. Steel pushed the two women that direction as well, but not as hard. None of the three took the hint. The man started to surge back up at him just as a contingent of the crowd made up their mind to rush the ramp. Steel shot him just as the man reached him. It wasn't like the blaster rifle was hard to miss, but maybe the guy had thought he wouldn't do it. Or maybe he knew he was dead anyway.

The troopers behind and above him let loose with volleys into the crowd, shattering the charge before it reached him. A lot more shots than just one were loosed in their direction a few seconds later. Whoever had been yelling about passing out blasters hadn't been kidding.

Steel swung his rifle to the two women as bolts were still zinging over his head. One of them yelled something like, "We will not be left here!" Steel shot them both. He stood there silent and unmoving, staring at their bodies. Out in the darkness, people screamed, called to one another, and beseeched the First Order not to leave without them. Others were shooting at them with erratic, lousy shots. The pull-out chime sounded again in his helmet. He started walking backward, gun panning over the bottom of the ramp, but no one else came out of the darkness.

The ramp clanged shut behind him. The three bodies were summarily shoved off to the side by the squad of troopers. All but one of the troopers, that was.

"What do you have there?" Colonel Hux was investigating the dirty bundle that trooper was carrying.

Steel was still standing there trying to cope with the fact that he'd killed three people. Absolutely, for sure, pulled the trigger knowing they'd die. He might have killed more than that when he'd fired the five or six shots he'd let go with into the crowd. Maybe he was responsible for the twenty or so that had ended up on the ground after the troopers opened fire at his order, and however many more fell when they loosed volleys defending him from the second charge. How many hundreds more death warrants had he signed, children this time, by accidentally provoking a riot that caused the colonel to pull out early? He didn't know. But he knew that Colonel Uptight was having a hissy fit over the baby.

"It's infested! I told you _one_! And not one that's infested!"

Steel walked over and looked. "It's a baby. Sometimes they look weird." He didn't know much about babies. Kids, sure. Infants? Not so much. He just knew they were precious, innocent, and needed protection.

"No," Hux said firmly. "Those marks are immature dretchy leeches. They haven't fully erupted yet. When they do, they will begin exuding eggs. The child is contaminated."

"You're not killing a baby." Calmly, Steel swung the blaster rifle to point at the colonel. What was one more life, especially this guy's, who was already an annoyance? "You're not killing _that_ baby."

Hux looked from the blaster to him and looked so thoroughly unimpressed that Steel was tempted to shoot him just to prove he was serious. But the three bodies stacked next to the ramp should have proven that well enough. Hux said to the trooper, "Give it to him, then. You have other duties." The colonel turned and walked away.


	7. One Thousand Cuts

**A/N: The Star Performer chapter 'Full Responsibility' has Hux's side of Snoke's first attempt to get his hands on weapons-grade kyber so his knights could have lightsabers. It gives some background as to why Hux was so pissy about the whole thing when Snoke and knights show up the second time such crystals are found. Which should also show why Snoke was so pissy about being thwarted the first time. These decisions made by different characters reverberate back and forth across different plotlines.**

 **The chapter title represents the slow whittling away at Kylo Ren's humanity that Snoke orchestrates over the course of several years. Though even at the end, as Kylo holds up his new lightsaber, its very form shows the process has been incomplete.**

* * *

They didn't have lightsabers when they were with Luke. Well, Ben had one. Eventually. Luke had his own green one that he'd made himself. But the practice of making lightsabers was not something Luke had encouraged any more than he'd encouraged swordplay or any aggressive uses of the Force. Ben had made his own over Luke's objections, objections that fell silent once the deed was done. Just like Snoke's whispers had promised would happen. Luke wouldn't treat him like a child once he had the weapon of an adult.

That was probably why Luke didn't want any of them to have a lightsaber. He saw them as children no matter how old they were – some of them were just more 'childish' than the others.

Snoke was different. Once they were with him and he'd assessed their proficiencies with the Force, he moved along to weaponry skills for all of them. Kylo was paired with Caspire. She was about his height and so had the same reach. She had about the same level of practice at this that Kylo did, which meant their swings with the practice swords were equally wild for their first match.

Snoke watched with thinned, flat lips and folded hands. At the end of their bout – defined by when they were so exhausted they couldn't keep the tips of the blades off the floor, a state that had come surprisingly quickly – Snoke only said, "We have much to work on," and sent them to the side. Tark and Steel were up next.

Tark was shorter than Steel. He was lighter and quicker as well. Like Kylo and Caspire, they had no training in this, but they could feel it when Tark tapped into the dark side. They could see it in the way his body flowed and his sword flashed, going where he willed it rather than where momentum and lack of muscle memory allowed it. The Force guided his blade and Steel's every slice at him was parried. Tark's every riposte hit home.

Then a snarl. Tark went on the offensive with a flurry of blows. Every one of them smacked sharply, leaving a bruise and raising a welt. Their match did not end with exhaustion. It ended when Tark had maneuvered Steel into tripping and falling, with no way up except into the point of Tark's blade.

"Good," Snoke said in approval. "Now you see what the dark side can bring you in combat."

Tark was heaving as the power faded from him and his body, unused to the strain, struggled. He staggered as he stepped back, allowing Steel to rise.

"As you also see," Snoke said with a nod, "that you can overexert yourself to your detriment. You must learn your limits and stay within them or the dark side will take a toll from your body, leaving you scarred and disfigured. Repeated excesses are not advised." Snoke made a vague gesture at himself. "And you, Steel? What have you to say for your pathetic showing?"

Steel made a slow twirl of his blade. He was smiling and even chuckled when he answered, "Yeah, that _was_ pathetic, wasn't it? But that was fun. I can get better."

Snoke half-rolled his eyes. "There is something to be said for attitude. Apply yourself properly and your proficiency with the blade may progress well beyond your miniscule talents with the Force itself." He turned to Kylo, nominally in charge. "You and your knights are in poor physical condition. There is no point in attempting training at this level of deficiency. The Order has a variety of resources for the training of combat personnel. Engage with them. Develop a program. Follow it for a month and then we will revisit this subject to see if any of you are ready for a practice blade."

* * *

Kylo was supposed to be angry. That was the goal – understand his anger, tap into it, channel it productively. It was surprisingly difficult to stay focused on the goal – any goal – while getting hit in the face. It was easy to get angry, though.

Four guards circled around him as they used padded practice weapons to strike him. He was armed similarly, but no armor. They wore some token pauldrons, vambraces, and groin protection. No helms. He was supposed to refrain from head shots. They were encouraged to make them. He was supposed to block all four of them at the same time. The unfairness of it all was, as Snoke had told him, a 'gift'.

Kylo was getting pretty tired of Snoke's 'gifts'. He reeled back from getting whacked over the ear with a sideways blow that rattled his brain. Letting his mind wander to what he thought of Snoke was not where his thoughts should be. But he had yet to leave from one of these so-called sparring sessions without his nose bleeding, head ringing, and a blooming collection of bruises that always had Tark and Steel laughing and Caspire looking concerned.

Another one slipped through, this time straight to the center of his face. There went the nose. Again. He could and did blast that foe backward with the Force, landing him on his rump and taking him out of the fight for a few seconds. But then someone behind him took advantage of the lapse in concentration to hit him in the back of the neck, wrenching it. With a savage roar, Kylo finally lost his temper.

He whirled with his sword, mentally lengthening the edge of it so that even though the warrior dodged back, the Force caught him on the shoulder anyway. There were two more behind him. One hit him in the kidney, the other was missing his legs due to lack of their skill. They were not perfect, but they were better every time Kylo faced them. By now, Kylo knew where they were and how they moved. He could sense it, feel it. But he couldn't lash out fast enough or with enough coordination.

He was hit again as he spun to face the pair, batting one's weapon out the way and shoulder-slamming into him. The other tried to track the sudden change in distance, but hadn't found his range before Kylo hit him with a Force shove, sending him flying back. He elbowed the one he was crowded next to, sending him down. It was a head shot. He wasn't supposed to do that. The realization broke his stride.

He didn't sense the one who came at him from behind, the one he'd struck on the shoulder earlier. And by now, the one he'd knocked on his rump after taking a hit over the ear was back at him. Between the two of them, Kylo lost his balance and fell. One of them stepped on his sword. The other had his 'blade' at Kylo's throat.

Chest heaving, Kylo flopped back on the floor. His teeth were bared. He could taste his own blood.

Off to the side, Snoke said, "This remains amusing to watch, although I am certain at some point I will find it tedious and involve shock batons. You would be wise to improve before then. Return in three days, my apprentice, and I will have four new guards to stir your fury."

* * *

Kylo closed his eyes and let go. It was a dance. There was symmetry. His four partners moved around him in tandem. They practiced as pairs. He could sense that somehow, lurking beneath their signatures in the Force. One led, one followed. He didn't need to see them to know which would move first.

He faded to the side as the one to his right moved in. The one to his left rear swung. He dodged. The one to the left moved in and he faded back out of range. The one to his right rear swung. He dodged that, too. The steps were clearly defined. When they realized he'd used the same maneuver on each pair, they altered pattern. But he knew that was coming.

For months, he'd practiced this battle sense with the other knights, by himself, and with Snoke's guards. It worked better if he didn't look, if he did as Luke had exhorted him for years and reached out with his feelings rather than his senses. Luke had never suggested he do that in combat. Luke hadn't taught them anything of combat. Jedi were supposed to use the Force only to protect and defend. But here he was using Luke's training to keep himself safe in between blasting people off their feet or slamming them in the solar plexus with his elbow.

He missed it when one of the guards hooked his ankle with the end of his polearm, yanking Kylo's foot from under him while the guard's partner shoved him. It was a messy tackle that Kylo almost recovered from, but the other two made sure he didn't rise. Still – he was getting the hang of this.

Snoke often didn't pay attention while they fought. Sometimes, he wasn't even present. But he had been here today. Once Kylo was standing and had presented himself properly on bent knee, Snoke told him, "A year ago, you were at the mercy of your emotions like a tantrum-throwing child. Now, under controlled conditions, with cooperative, familiar opponents, no fear of death or maiming, and after great practice, you have achieved some modicum of discipline. Congratulations. I have seen similar improvements in your knights. We will now see about putting actual weapons in these hands."

* * *

"Greetings, Leader Snoke," Colonel Hux said as Snoke debarked from the shuttle that had landed on the planet dubbed 'Starkiller'. "Per your command, excavation has stopped."

"Good."

"I must object to this, sir."

"You object to following my orders?" Snoke sounded amused rather than offended. He had paused after stepping onto the ground of the airfield. The warm summer wind whipped at his robes. Kylo and the knights waited on the ramp for Snoke to continue. A small party of nervous technicians and a pair of customarily stoic officers made up the reception party that had accompanied the colonel out to meet the leader of the First Order and his retinue.

"Never, sir. But this is an unaccounted-for delay-"

"Which would not have happened if your team had behaved correctly the first time such crystals were found. Did the punishment for that infraction not take sufficiently?"

Fear radiated off the thin man strongly enough that most of the knights felt it. _Again?_ Hux thought. The colonel stammered, "Yes sir. No. I mean, it's fine, sir. Of course, it did. But, the schedule-"

"Is your responsibility. You can snivel about your failings at your next project review meeting or you can find a way to make up for the time. It's your choice." Snoke swept past him, ignoring the twitching upper lip on the man that was trying to be a snarl. The knights filed past him.

Kylo and his knights descended into the narrow chamber breached by the excavation. Each meditated until they felt the call of the crystal meant for them. Tonza found hers first. Then Steel. Kylo wondered if there was a significance to the order. He meditated along with them, but no crystal called to him. This was unsurprising.

He already had his lightsaber, although he had yet to bleed it to the dark side. But there was more to hear, thrumming away in the planet's core. The place was a fascinating whorl in the Force, a place of turbulence and lurking destruction. It was like being in a nightmare, knowing that if you turned around, you'd see the massacre that had happened behind you, the one that maybe you'd committed yourself. Or at least, those were the sort of nightmares Kylo had.

Snippets of red visions danced at the corners of his awareness. He thought about asking to stay longer, but his knights were waiting for him. And somewhere, the colonel was fretting loudly enough in the Force that Kylo was sure he could hear him. It was like a hissing tea kettle in the background. Now that he was hearing it, his meditation was broken. Annoyed, Kylo rose and led the knights out. They had what they needed.

"That was thirteen hours of machines idle while they collected rocks!" Colonel Hux told Snoke as Kylo and the knights left the cave. His tone was disrespectful. The way he looked at the knights was antagonistic. Kylo, who normally had not a shred of affection for Snoke, wanted to slap the colonel just on principle for addressing Snoke that way. Inside, the colonel was fuming much the same as his spoken words: _How long does it take to collect a few rocks? Half a day? Did they fall asleep down there?_

Snoke seemed less effected by it. "You will make up for it."

"I will _have_ to make up for it," Hux lamented. _Someone does, and of course it's going to be me!_ His thoughts, still broadcasted as loudly as Kylo had ever heard anyone's, turned into a jumble of equipment specifications and possible adjustments and what if they narrowed the central corridor again and … Kylo tuned him out. He'd seen this guy before in a few meetings, but he'd rarely disliked anyone so strongly for knowing them so little.

"Then do so." Snoke turned a half-powered glare on the orange-haired man. "Do not trouble me about it further."

"Yes, Leader Snoke." When Snoke's back was turned, Hux scowled at the knights and projected so clearly it was impossible not to hear even through the block: _This is your fault!_ Kylo was thankful of the helmets because he was sure the looks being directed back at the officer were no friendlier.

* * *

Bleeding a kyber crystal was a test of one's commitment to the dark side. One had to pour one's hate, rage, and pain into the crystal's delicate lattice, re-aligning it to match the unique impression of one's will. It had been difficult enough to transition every member of his knights to the dark side, but now they had to actively use the essence of it to permanently alter another living being. Because the crystals were alive. There was no doubt about that.

Luke hadn't focused on it very much in their training because there wasn't much information readily available. But any living creature who held a crystal could feel it. Any Force sensitive knew what it meant. If the crystals had an opinion, they didn't make it clear. To bleed one, you had to make it yours with a sort of obsessive possessiveness that felt like mania. From Kylo's point of view, you had to drive yourself insane.

They retired to the _Eclipse_ for the arduous process. Snoke gave them careful instructions on how to do it, but then he retired to his chambers to continue the work of administrating the First Order. No one else could do this for them, nor could they do it for one another. It was a solitary journey to accepting one's self as nothing to the galaxy at large, but everything to yourself. So much of the Force was contradiction. It was built directly in the Jedi Code. Snoke had confirmed that in this at least, the Jedi hadn't been lying. They had to embrace the contradiction and give all for nothing, for nothing was all they'd ever have.

The crystal resisted the process, more for him than for the others, for their crystals were going from an unbonded state to dark. Kylo's had to be reversed entirely from light to dark. Once he was deep into the transition, there was no going back. He wouldn't survive it if he tried – the crystal would detonate, open a breach to hyperspace, and destroy everything near it. He had no idea what the radius of effect would be, so it wasn't just his own life that would be lost. He had to be totally committed. He could no longer be Ben Solo – not in any corner of his soul.

The ship vibrated with his exertion and he could sense, at the edge of his awareness, that Snoke was putting effort into keeping the _Eclipse_ intact. Snoke couldn't help directly, but at least he could make sure Kylo didn't inadvertently plunge them all into the vacuum of space. He tried to purge every sliver of the light. He tried to concentrate on how much he hated Luke, his grief toward his mother, his resentment toward his father, the self-loathing and determination he'd felt in killing the other students.

But it was incomplete. He only hated Luke because he felt betrayed and he only felt betrayed because he'd loved him. He wanted his parents back. He couldn't let that go no matter how much the dark flowed through him. He'd killed some of the students to protect the others. His motivations were all wrong.

There was no way to go back. He couldn't change his mind at this point – there would be an explosive release of energy beyond what his body could withstand. So he persisted in the grueling ordeal until it seemed like exhaustion itself was his ally, blunting the emotions of hope and happiness, making them seem so far away that they were inconsequential. All that mattered was the agony at hand, which outstripped even his considerable ability to ignore. He finally, laboriously, finished.

The very crackling, spitting, uncertain nature of the resultant blade was his constant reminder of how imperfect the transition had been and how shallow his commitment was to the dark side. He had to modify his design at the last moment simply to survive it, adding side vents that he'd seen during research years earlier. Research he'd done while at Luke's academy. Not here. If he hadn't had that training, he would have died and Kylo knew that.

The lightsaber he held up was a visual representation of his deficiency. Snoke was displeased, but the effort had been so great he didn't suggest a second attempt with a new crystal. Kylo looked on it and tried not to think about how Luke had never said a weapon made a man. That had been Snoke.


	8. General Problems

**A/N: This chapter constitutes the first significant interaction between Kylo Ren and Armitage Hux. They've seen each other before now, but this is the first time they say much of anything. Hux's take on this first day is in the Star Performer chapter 'Communication Protocols'.**

 **There is a planet in Star Wars called Iego. It's in the Outer Rim with a very low population. Mostly hostile to human life and no longer producing anything economically viable. The First Order has made recruitment runs by it. Captain Iegoh joined the First Order as an adult and took a slightly altered version of the name of his homeworld as his last name. Not that this really matters, but hey – even my throwaway background characters have backstories!**

 **From Grey and Complicated, the chapter 'First Day on the Job':**

Kylo looked at the man's face, studying it. Hux was, theoretically, his second in command now. He led the military, first among a few other generals, admirals, and planetary governors, with a collection of captains and commanders arranged under them, and so on down the chain of command to the lowliest of troopers. Kylo Ren was not and never had been part of that organization. He did not share training, classes, missions, or background with them. Snoke's Force-users were entirely separate, more removed from the standard military than even the technician class, which included scientists and engineers. He'd worked with Hux at times, but never needed to understand him. There was a lot of friction between them.

* * *

Kylo Ren would be glad to be off this planet. Starkiller Base was unsettling, with a poisonous resonance in the Force. He'd felt similar on explorations with Luke when they'd visited sites of dark power that Palpatine had left intact for obvious reasons. He didn't like the way it dragged at his mind. There were thousands of people toiling away here. It had to be corrupting all of them.

The guiding architect of this monstrosity was crossing the hangar bay to board the shuttle to the _Finalizer_ with him. For a general, he was a young man, only a few years older than Kylo but in charge of so much more. He had the loudest thoughts Kylo had had to put up with. It was like he was always upset about something. Kylo had disliked him before Snoke had said he was off-limits, some favored darling Snoke found amusing.

It had not helped for Snoke to tell Kylo directly that he valued Hux more than any of Kylo's knights. The threat was there, as it always was. It had also not helped for Snoke to explicitly tell Kylo he had a mental rider on Hux and so would detect if Kylo interfered with his mind in any way. He supposed it did help him to know this, as it kept Kylo from making a misstep, but it showed a disturbing level of protectiveness. As far as Kylo knew, Hux was the only being aside from Kylo himself who Snoke had gone to the bother of monitoring this closely. He didn't want to be jealous, but he was.

It all combined neatly to mean he hated Hux on principle. Kylo's long association with Snoke allowed Kylo to believe this was intentional – another 'gift' to help him hone his control and the depth of the dark side. Still. It didn't rankle any less. He had to work harder on control – a lesson Snoke had been trying to drum into him for years, and Luke before that. Neither of them were satisfied with his progress.

Hux entered the shuttle, gave his helmeted, black-clad figure a glance, gave a small crate a more interested glance than he'd given Kylo, then went to the pilot. "Are we ready to take off?" He didn't address Kylo at all.

"Yes sir."

"Then do so." So much for being the equals Snoke had promised. He wondered what Snoke had told Hux of their shared status. He knew Hux had met with Snoke again this morning.

The rear hatch closed as the pilot obeyed Hux's order without asking for Kylo's input. The pilot wasn't to blame for that. No public announcement had been made. Snoke had told him Hux would handle that in due time – whatever that meant. Probably another test, this time of his patience.

Hux moved back to a jump seat and sat, his thoughts rolling out as he did. _Just him? No luggage? No staff? Would Snoke have mentioned them? He would have. The pilot would have. I don't know that pilot. From the_ Eclipse _. Snoke's? Where are we going, even, after we dock? I shouldn't ask now. Looks needy. I'm not his subordinate. If I ask, he could refuse to tell me. Should I ask how long to the_ Finalizer _?_ Hux glanced toward the pilot. _No. It won't be long. It's just in orbit. I'd look stupid and nervous if I did_. He withdrew his datapad and turned it on.

Hux opened a message from Captain Peavey reporting on the readiness of the _Finalizer_ for the mission they were being sent on. Hux scoured it for indications of what the mission entailed. _Looks like Peavey doesn't know either. He's watching me. I wonder if he's reading my mind? Fuck off, you_.

Kylo took a deep breath, then let it out. Snoke's orders had been clear – he couldn't harm the general. That said nothing about the man's things. Kylo certainly wasn't going to let their first substantive interaction begin with him doing nothing about being treated as insignificant and being told to fuck off.

He clenched one fist. The datapad erupted in sparks and flying bits as it smashed into itself, wadded like paper. Hux jumped and dropped it. His gloved hands, uniform, and greatcoat protected the general from any possibility of damage. Kylo made sure no shards flew upward. He released his fist.

Hux came to his feet. "What is the meaning of this?"

"You will not address me that way."

"I said nothing!"

"You know what you did."

"Yes, and you know what you did! Lost your temper and tried to pick a fight!" Hux took a step closer to him as he spoke, head high, hands loose, a snarl on his face as he tried to do exactly what he'd just accused Kylo of.

Kylo just looked at him. The man fully expected to be slapped to the floor and put in his place – maybe physically, maybe with the Force. He didn't think he'd win. Hux wasn't even sure he'd fight back, despite seething with anger. He seemed to have no inkling of the prohibition Kylo was under regarding damaging him. Interesting.

Kylo tilted his head slowly. Hux swallowed, breathing harder. A tremor built in his hands. Several beats of increasingly uncomfortable silence passed where Kylo could feel the anger slowly turn to fear without Kylo doing a thing. But Hux didn't back down. Kylo said, "When you come into a room with me, you will acknowledge me as an equal." The vocoder made his voice a menacing growl, but it probably would have been so without it.

 _We are not equals! I am a general. You are a … Why am I picking a fight with him? He's not making an unreasonable request. I don't know what he is_. "What else?" Hux snapped. _Might not even be human. What are the rest of the rules?_

Kylo's brows rose slightly inside the mask. "Learn to keep your thoughts to yourself if you don't want everyone knowing them."

Hux glared. His mind was pleasingly blank for a moment. Then: _I have no idea how to do that._ "'Everyone' is not a mind reader. You are. Stay away from my people and my things." But not himself. It was an odd oversight – there was no demand to stay out of his head, even though that was what they were discussing. It was like it didn't even occur to him to ask.

Hux went back to his seat, crunching over the bits of datapad. _Will he tell me how? Probably not. Is he still reading my mind? Probably. Fuck off! Wait. I'll start the whole thing over again. I already thought it. I hate him. You. Kriff. How the hell am I supposed to not think? No wonder the Sith surrounded themselves with brainless sycophants._

Kylo turned and walked to the front of the ship. This was going to be a difficult mission, for reasons he hadn't anticipated yesterday.

* * *

Kylo was not invited to accompany Hux after he left the shuttle, but he did anyway. Hux had sent away the small crate with a portage droid, with directions to deliver it to his quarters. Those were his things that he was bringing with him off Starkiller. Kylo had nothing but what he carried on him. Sure, he had some few material possessions beyond that, but they were on the _Eclipse_. He would return to them after this mission was over, or send for them if it turned out this was a permanent base of operations.

Aside from a moment of annoyance at being shadowed, Hux's thoughts moved on from Kylo. They also quieted, which was a relief. They remained busy, just lower in volume, although Kylo couldn't help but pick up the general content. Hux worried – about the flooding Peavey had mentioned on deck C, the location of their unknown destination, where Snoke would reside while on Starkiller, the fate of his various hand-picked engineers and managers, if he should talk to Phasma about syncing their schedule so he could spend more time with the class … they arrived on the bridge.

Kylo had never been on the bridge of a star destroyer, not even the _Eclipse_. Snoke didn't command it directly; there had never been a reason for the knights to visit it. He walked forward slowly, attracting quick looks. He noted they were immediately followed by a checking glance to Hux. Hux ignored Kylo and moved straight to Captain Iegoh, who was the third shift commander. Kylo had been told the primary ship commander was Captain Peavey, but he must be off-shift. Seeing Hux's lack of interest in Kylo's movements, the crew, likewise, went back to their business.

Kylo went to the viewport. They were facing away from the planet, and the viewport showed them direct forward, but there were additional wraparound screens, making a U that showed them some 270 degrees of the field in a horizontal plane. Off to the left he could see an assortment of cargo hanging in space, tended by a few moving droids. A freighter was staged next to it. He could pick up a whisper of intention from them. They were anxious to go, but could not for some reason. He watched for a few minutes, but nothing changed.

Directly ahead was empty space. At some point in that direction there was a hyperwave beacon marking the entrance of the wormhole Snoke had made to this place, but it wasn't visible to the naked eye at this distance. The _Finalizer's_ weapons and scanners were trained on the wormhole entrance. There were probably small ships on patrol closer to it. Anything that came through without authorization would be target practice. To the right, Kylo could see a sliver of the planet of Starkiller Base. From this angle, the scar across the face of the world and the gouges that marred it fore and aft weren't visible.

He meditated on the place's Force signature. It was more diffuse here, the dreadful intent of the planet less clear-cut than when he was standing on it. It was an interesting difference. Timelines of possibility flowed both ahead and behind it, as though even past decisions regarding the site were in doubt. This was also intriguing.

Hux walked up behind him, his proximity interrupting Kylo's contemplation. The general fell in next to him, looking in the same direction to see what it was that had captured Kylo's attention.

 _Snoke saw the place from across the galaxy. Can Kylo? Can everyone with the Force? I wonder how many people that is?_ "What is it you see when you look at it?"

"That planet is a wound in the Force waiting to happen." Kylo offered. In most cases, if people talked, their mental voice dropped away as their focus turned to their words. Maybe the man would be easier to handle if he kept Hux talking. Besides, it was a useful opportunity to talk to the person responsible for Starkiller about the implications of the place.

"It's a weapon," Hux said plainly. "That's what weapons are for – to wound people." _Or kill them. Threaten them, maybe. We're not going to threaten with Starkiller._

"A wound _in the Force_ ," Kylo insisted, because that was a thing in and of itself. On the other hand, maybe there wasn't much to discuss about it with Hux. He knew what he was building the place for. It wasn't likely Kylo could convince him to stop. It might not even be _right_ to convince him to stop. Snoke obviously thought Starkiller was necessary.

"If the Force can be wounded, then it can be destroyed and I haven't seen that that is possible." Some older, patriarchal voice sounded in Hux's head, carrying the authority of a law: ' _If it bleeds, you can kill it.'_ The fleeting impression in Hux's mind of the speaker reminded Kylo of his own impression of Luke – powerful and frightening.

"It's not. That's not-" Kylo stopped. He was beginning to realize the two of them didn't share enough of a frame of reference to have the conversation. Or maybe, any conversation. Even if they did, he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the thoughts of someone who had no moral qualms about extinguishing stars and blowing up planets. He would never have doubted Snoke's wisdom, but seeing the same subject noisily and ignorantly bouncing around in Hux's mind made Kylo want to argue against the ideas.

Hux went on blithely, "What else is the Force for, if not wounding people or making it easier to wound them?"

"That's not what the Force _is_ ," Kylo said, both offended and frustrated. He wasn't as bad as this guy. But … was Snoke? It was confusing.

"It's called the 'Force' for a reason. It tears people apart. That's all it does. Anything else is lying to yourself to make yourself feel justified when you use it to hurt people." Hux showed his teeth a lot in those few lines, with a snarl and a sublimated desire to bite and tear that came across as clearly as any projected thought. There was a lot of hate there – for the Force, for Kylo, for Snoke, for any Force user. _Cheaters and liars, all of you! Pretending some kind of nobility about a power specifically and explicitly called 'Force'! Ridiculous hypocrisy. Bunch of sanctimonious moralizers. Must be nice to be able to tell the future and see through people's masks._

Kylo felt an echoing surge of anger. He wanted to use the Force against the man to shut him up, but that would just prove him right. He ground his teeth instead, glad of the helmet for the umpteenth time today, and even found it within himself to be amazed at Snoke's patience that this being was still alive. Snoke had to be keeping Hux around as some kind of court jester. It was the only thing that made sense. Maybe Snoke kept him around as a twisted mirror, a fractured, worst-case version of Snoke's aims. Maybe that was it – it made a sort of sense. Kylo stared out at Starkiller, felt his frustrated rage at not understanding any of this flow through him, and coiled it up within himself for later.

Into the silence, Hux worried again about leaving his people under Snoke's direct command. Hux didn't like the line of thought, so he turned to bother Kylo again. "I was ordered to oversee the administrative details involved in your position here. You will need code cylinders for security clearance. I will have them modeled after mine." _I ought to install a tracking device on him somewhere. Somehow._

It was an idle thought, not especially angry. It felt like a routine security feature. Also – they'd just argued; Kylo had felt Hux's deep wrath – and now it was gone. Dismissed. Hux had moved on like the argument was unimportant, while Kylo was still dwelling on it. The failure to take it personally and brood on it was weird. Hux said, "For that, we will need your biometric data. Are you in the system?"

"Yes." Kylo was torn between being sullen and being disbelieving that they were really going to transition the discussion smoothly into trivial matters of paperwork.

"We also need you, in person, to match it."

"I am here." He turned partway to face Hux.

"Come with me."

Kylo considered disputing the politeness of Hux's tone or his phrasing of it as an order, but elected not to. They'd clashed enough. It was getting tiresome, building a pressure inside he wanted to vent by lashing out. They left the bridge. On the way to security, Kylo got to listen as Hux mentally debated the pros and cons of getting Kylo a proper sign-on for command authority. He decided not to, mainly because he was vindictive, which Hux was fully aware of and not troubled by.

Hux also assumed Kylo was listening to him. Even though his main motivation was simply being petty, Hux mentally reviewed his other reasons like he was laying out a legal argument. Kylo's very title 'co-commander' or 'master of the Knights of Ren' was outside the military structure, therefore he had no authority within the military structure. He didn't understand protocol or have the proper training (so far as Hux knew). Hux didn't want him screwing things up. Most of all, he didn't want a Force user interacting with his personnel. Best to route all Kylo's orders through himself.

Kylo said nothing. He was fine with it as a solution. It was easier to control, read, and influence one person than scores of them. He could always override whoever he needed to on the spot. Snoke's orders had been particular about Hux, but as they'd gone through with Tark, anything else they did was fine as long as the consequences were accounted for.


	9. General Obstinacy

**A/N: Again, Hux's take on this day is in the Star Performer chapter 'Communication Protocols'. I don't recall if Krevens Harborworks was mentioned in the Pacification backstory, but it was part of the general structure of First Order core worlds, so it was nice to work in a mention of them.**

* * *

Hux sought him out after Kylo was done with the paperwork. Kylo's first impression was that Hux had returned for him out of politeness and possible collaboration. But then Hux gave a careful examination to the woman who had been helping Kylo requisition clothing and have it delivered to his newly assigned quarters. Hux ordered a replacement datapad for himself and made unnecessary small talk as he watched her for signs of distress or anxiety in regard to Kylo. He assumed Kylo was a monster. Kylo was silent.

When Hux was done, he said to Kylo, "To the bridge then. Shift change will happen shortly and we should inform Captain Peavey of our course."

Once they were within the elevator, Kylo sniffed. Something was filtering through his mask. Of course, he didn't have the filtration level turned up much. With a precise touch of the Force, he altered it to let in more of the scent. He looked to the side at the cup the general had been carrying when he'd come to the quartermaster's office. It seemed to be the source. "What is that?"

Hux looked at him askance. _What is he doing?_ "It is tea." _Is he going to break my cup like the datapad?_

Kylo inhaled hard enough the vocoder related the sound as a hiss. It wasn't normal tea. "It's different. Bitter."

 _It's taurine tea. Of course it smells like taurine tea. Why does he care? Does he want some? I'm not sharing. What does he think this is? Why is he looking at me like that? Even stormtroopers have more manners. Eyes front and center, like they should be._ Hux scowled at him and took a deep sip. _Stars, that's hot! Might as well drink it before he does something to it._

"Taurine," Kylo said. It made sense now. He would have dismissed it had Hux's thoughts not continued to project noisily between them. Kylo turned to face forward.

 _So what? It's taurine. It's not on the banned substances list. It's not even restricted to have. It's just illegal to get it. What of it? He doesn't know where I get it. It's none of his business. Maybe I should think of something else if he can hear me. Numbers? Schedules?_

"I have a special dislike for those who consort with smugglers."

"I have a special dislike for those who don't mind their own business!" Hux snapped at him, his voice loud in the confined space of the elevator. There was fear there, and concern. Someone Hux cared about might get in trouble, but he didn't think about them enough for Kylo to catch their identity. _If he's still reading my mind, then maybe I can project things in particular?_ He focused on images and sensations to accompany his next thoughts: _Defecate of vacubreather. The contents of severed intestines. Rigor mortis._

"You have made it my business." Kylo breathed out heavily. He stalked out of the elevator, ignoring Hux's exultant thoughts at having driven him away. Yes, Snoke's efforts to continue his training had really kicked up a notch.

* * *

Command changeover at shift change had a ritual to it. Kylo stayed out of it. So did Hux, to his surprise. He'd expected the man to stick his nose into everything, but he stayed out of his subordinate's way and waited until Captain Iegoh had left the bridge before answering a question so obvious on Peavey's face that no one need be a mind-reader to see it.

Hux led Peavey to where Kylo had been looking out at the storage area. For a few moments, all three of them looked out. The freighter had left. A new one was arriving. These were First Order vessels from Krevens Harborworks with crews of workers or maybe technicians. They were low quality ships, but probably fine for what they were doing – ferrying material from the Unknown Region Kuat Entralla shipyard station to here at Starkiller.

Kylo assumed there was an exchange of cargo that happened at the shipyard, from the Republic freighters to these, because non-Order ships and crew were not allowed to see Starkiller Base. The penalty was death, although he wondered if any had made it here to suffer it. Snoke had a third of the fleet present at the shipyards in defense of the _Supremacy_ as well as the choke point (and one short jump) to Starkiller. It seemed excessive, but Snoke's wisdom outstripped Kylo's on all fronts.

He turned to face the general and captain. At this, Hux spoke, giving a proper introduction as he should, introducing the lower ranking person to the higher first. "Captain Peavey, this is my co-commander, Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren."

 _Co-commander?_ ran through Peavey's mind with confusion. It was not a recognized rank or title.

"Master Ren-" Hux began.

"Lord Ren," Kylo corrected. "Snoke's apprentice." He was not a Jedi and he couldn't tell if Hux was assuming he was or just taking the title from 'Master of the Knights of Ren'. Hux took the correction in stride without devoting any of his characteristically loud thoughts to it.

"Lord Ren, this is Captain Peavey, ship commander."

They nodded to one another. Peavey asked Hux, "What does co-commander entail, sir?"

"He is my equal in rank." The words came out easily, but Kylo felt the resentment Hux had at having to say them.

"Equal …?" Peavey continued to be confused. He glanced over Kylo, noting the absence of any markers of rank or pretense of a proper uniform. He'd seen Knights of Ren before and heard of them by rumor, but he didn't know where they fit, if at all, in the hierarchy.

"Yes," Hux told him. "He does not have command authority, but in all other matters, he should be accorded the same respect."

"My commands will be obeyed when I give them," Kylo said.

Peavey blinked twice and snapped his eyes to Hux. _A pissing contest,_ Peavey thought unhappily.

"Yes, probably," Hux said in response to Kylo. _I doubt anyone will have any choice in the matter_ , Hux thought in distaste. _I'll sort this out with Edrison later._ "Snoke said you would share our destination and mission."

Kylo had hoped Hux would have to work himself up to ask for the information in some humiliating fashion. He'd hoped it would be a request or phrased in some other way that admitted Kylo knew something Hux needed to know. He wanted some indication that he deserved respect. Instead, ' _should be_ accorded the same respect' and 'Snoke said _you would_ '. It boxed Kylo in a corner where refusing looked as petty as Hux was.

Kylo turned to Peavey. "How long until the ship has recalled all patrol units and is ready to jump to hyperspace?" Kylo knew full well how rude he was being to address Hux's subordinate right in front of him, without going through Hux.

Another snap of Peavey's eyes to Hux and a beat of hesitation. "A half hour, sir."

"Good," Kylo said. "Make ready."

"Make ready," Hux repeated off-handedly, observing the formalities with a disinterest he didn't feel. Dryly, he said, "At some point, we'll need to know the course."

"I will provide it!" Kylo snapped, the vocoder rendering his voice as more menacing than normal.

Hux's words were fine. His tone was borderline sarcasm. "My crew stands ready to follow the orders." _**My**_ _orders, asshole._ Hux turned and marched himself off to a console. Peavey took a single, careful step backward, pivoted, and began to relay orders necessary for their departure.

Kylo glared after Hux, nothing immediately coming to mind that would allow him to teach the man a lesson. Leader Snoke was wise to caution him against using the Force on Hux. Otherwise, by now he'd have done so at least a half dozen times.

A half hour later, all was ready. He knew this because Peavey reported it quietly to Hux on the opposite side of the bridge, hoping Kylo wouldn't hear it. Hux turned and made it three strides toward Kylo before Kylo cut him off by looking down into the navigator's pit to tell them, "Set course for the shipyards." He knew they heard him. Neither of the primary navigators so much as looked up. Both of them wondered if he'd been talking to Hux.

Speaking of which, it briefly crossed Hux's mind to shoot him for the offense of attempting to give orders to his subordinates. Instead, Hux continued walking over to him, feeling no small amount of pride that no course had been set. Kylo swung his head to the man. Repeating his orders as a mind trick would look weak, just proving the point that they wouldn't do what he said unless he compelled it. He should have used it to start with.

Hux said, "As we were discussing earlier, while I'm certain you can _force_ people to comply, but you gain no real loyalty that way." _You will be sabotaged the moment your attention strays. Did Snoke teach you nothing?_

Peavey was staying where he was as far away from them as possible. He was remembering a probably-apocryphal (but oft-repeated) tale of an officer filing a personnel complaint against Darth Vader for choking him. Then Hux's comment about how Peavey had never had to stand in front of Snoke. He wasn't sure what to make of Hux squaring off with an obvious Sith lord over protocol. It seemed like a poor choice of battles to pick. But, well, far be it from Peavey to interfere with a Hux's decisions.

Kylo stared at Hux, but this time the man's reaction did not devolve into fear. Hux obviously felt strong here. Protected. Surrounded by … if not enthusiastic loyalty, then at least conditioned obedience. Kylo had been standing here for a half hour listening to people's thoughts. They were strictly trained to follow orders from authorized personnel _only_ and Hux had plainly stated Kylo was not authorized.

By the same manner that Snoke – once in charge and recognized as legitimate – stayed in charge, Kylo – once listed and announced as unauthorized – was going to have to fight his own (no, _Hux's_ own) people every step of the way. Even the ones who didn't like Hux.

"If you prefer that I give _you_ orders, that can be arranged. Set course for the shipyards."

"Leader Snoke was clear to me that you have no authority to give me orders." Despite that, Hux turned to look back at Captain Peavey, giving him one nod. Peavey began relaying the appropriate orders. Efficiently, the ship jumped within seconds. Hux turned back to Kylo. "His orders to me are to assist you in your mission. Until you disclose that mission to me …" Hux shrugged.

Kylo realized this was not a battle he was going to win – not without considerable consequences. He couldn't resist a last barb, though. "You're one of Snoke's foremost generals and he didn't tell you what this mission was?"

 _I'm one of his foremost generals?_ Hux responded stiffly. "It is not my position to question Leader Snoke's orders. Are you telling me it's yours?"

"No."

"Very well. We will be at the shipyards shortly. It is not a lengthy jump." _Then I suppose we will quarrel again about the next leg of the journey. I wonder if I have time for a meal bar?_ The early morning meeting with Snoke had meant Hux had skipped breakfast.

Kylo was more accustomed to officers quaking in their boots when contemplating arguing with him – not thinking about snacks and dismissing him as unimportant. He knew he'd lost this one a long time ago. Continuing to fight was pointless. "What is the proper manner for me to relate our mission?"

Hux's answer was immediate. "In the ready room. As soon as possible. To myself as the ranking officer and Captain Peavey as ship commander, so long as he is not actively overseeing something."

"Just the two of you?"

"For the moment. I will assess who else needs to be pulled into a more detailed briefing. If all we're doing is ferrying you to the shipyards, then I hardly need to convene a council for it. If we're assaulting Coruscant," Hux said with half a laugh, "that will take a bit more discussion."

"Then let us convene."


	10. Simple Goals

**A/N: I imagine Earth technology, circa 2000, for ISR-458. It is not Earth. I'm just using that as a convenient model.**

* * *

Hux blinked at Kylo with an annoying level of disbelief. "Did I hear you correctly? I think you began this explanation by saying the mission was simple. Planetary conquest is 'simple'?"

"This will be," Kylo said testily. "They're isolated on the other side of the Unknown Regions. No allies; no trade. They're primitive. They don't even have hyperdrives or a planetary defense network. They don't have a unified world government. They're divided. Easy to conquer."

"That only means we'll have to deal with them piecemeal and we can't intimidate them without repeated demonstrations of power," Hux said. "That's the opposite of simple."

"Then it's your job to _make it_ simple." Kylo's voice came out in a growl. "You're the general."

Hux pulled a frown at him and looked to Captain Peavey, the only other person in this preliminary briefing for their mission. "Your input?"

"I'll follow your orders, sir."

Hux snapped immediately, "My order is that you provide substantive input on this discussion."

Peavey thought, _I'm too old for this kark. I can't believe he wants my opinion, the twerp. He probably doesn't._ "Go in with overwhelming force then. The troops need practice. Most have never seen combat. No matter how incompetent our enemies are, we'll lose a lot of troops doing something like this." _Also, not sure either one of_ _ **you**_ _are competent. Moden's right._ Peavey tried to conceal his sigh.

"True," Hux said. "That's good input. Keep giving it." He looked back to Ren. "It's convenient then that we're going through the shipyards. We can recruit whatever we need, within reason."

"He's right," Kylo said with a nod toward Peavey to indicate who he meant. "We should treat this as a practice run. There will be other missions later, more dangerous ones where we'll need to enter Republic space and either make sure there are no surviving witnesses or go in by stealth." Snoke had given him an overview of his expectations.

Hux snorted softly. " _Resurgent_ -class star destroyers are good at many things, but stealth is not one of them. You'll have to rely on the former."

"The former will not always be possible. We'll have to find freighters, shuttles, yachts, corvettes, whatever. We can infiltrate in one of those."

"'We'?" _I'm not going on some spy mission with the likes of you. I'll stay safely on the bridge, thank you very much._

"We're getting ahead of ourselves," Kylo said with a shake of his head. "Our mission _now_ is taking over ISR-458. Do what you need to do to accomplish that. I'll be leading the ground forces."

"You're going down in person?" Hux asked. _More fool you_.

"Of course," Kylo said. "That's what leaders do. They lead."

* * *

Kylo had never done anything like this. Neither had the troopers with him. They'd done simulations – and so had he – but it wasn't the real thing and everyone knew it. Well, they knew it _now_. He could hear it bouncing around in their heads, especially Sergeant AC-0047 next to him.

She'd thought of herself as something of a veteran, given the mix of actual and simulated missions she'd been on. Unlike most, she remembered something of her childhood from before joining the Order. It was a distinction that made her seem older, wiser, and more traveled than the rest. She was barely twenty and just now realizing how little she knew.

Kylo knew more, but her thoughts made him feel sorry for all of those being thrown into this with even less experience than he had. Snoke had stressed repeatedly the importance of real combat experience with live opponents. He didn't mind the knights using sims any more than he did them lifting weights, doing resistance exercises, or intense cardio. Those all had their place in building a competent warrior. But he'd made sure they understood that fighting was much more than drills and forms.

Hence the live training that took up hours every day, to the limit of what his body could manage (and then beyond that with the Force; the training sessions were often followed up with Snoke showing them how to accelerate healing and manage pain). If he wasn't sparring with the knights, it was with the praetorian guards or even occasionally a few hand-picked troopers back on the _Eclipse_. The battle sense Kylo had developed this way was invaluable. His focus was good. His emotional control was getting better.

None of the troopers with him had those benefits. They were nervous, realizing their enemies would be shooting back for real. They wouldn't be taking stun rounds and analyzing their performance later for where they messed up. If they messed up here, this planet would be their grave. They'd be left behind like a spent charge casing. That was the standard protocol.

Their jitters escalated as they entered the turbulence of upper atmosphere. Kylo took a faltering step forward, trying to decide what to do. He needed to do _something_. What would his grandfather have done? Back in the beginning, before people were bolstered and calmed just by being in his presence, knowing they would win out because the great Anakin Skywalker was there? What had he done before he'd proven himself as a general and Jedi? Kylo didn't know, but he knew what his mother, Leia, would have done.

Kylo turned around, putting his back against the exit ramp. He looked at the white and black helmets facing him. This was a mixed unit, specially put together to accompany him. They were supposed to keep him safe, which Kylo had been surprised to discover was a priority for General Hux and not one relayed to him by Snoke. Hux just thought it made sense – if Kylo were the equivalent of a general, then he should be protected like one. But even if these people were among the best Hux had, they were still green, as Peavey had noted. Hux had what real veterans he had leading the mass of troopers so Ren didn't have to manage the army in addition to this strike force.

"I'm not a speaker," Kylo told them, "but there are things I can say. I feel your fear. Emotion is the weapon of the Force – use it. Let it drive you forward. The Force is with me. The Force is with you, too. We will win this battle. And the next one. And the one after that. The First Order will defeat its enemies. Leader Snoke has seen the future – he knows this; I know this. Whatever you do on this planet will not be in vain. It won't be wasted. Your _effort_ will not be wasted. Or forgotten. I am with you. We are together. That's how we will win this fight: together. That is all that matters today."

He turned around again as the ship leveled out in the lower atmosphere. Outside, he knew the fighters escorting them were engaging aerial units launched by these two allied countries the First Order would quell in this initial deployment. A few countries had immediately welcomed them. Most were undecided and untrusting. Those who were openly hostile, like these two, would be the first to be ground under the boot heel of the Order. A few good examples should bring the rest into line.

Around him, he could feel that his awkward speech had had a good effect. It had given them something to focus on instead of their uncertainty. He knew – he'd read, when studying with Luke – that there were ways to extend battle senses to an entire army. The Jedi had done so at times with the clones, but that was easier due to the similarity of the clone's minds. As the clones had aged and differentiated through experience, it became more difficult, as it would probably be with these units. But it was still possible.

Snoke had shown him how he could hold the entirety of the First Order in his mind, applying a mild pressure like a mind trick to bend them to obedience and loyalty. The weakest-willed fell into line automatically. The strongest, Snoke dealt with individually – either removing, coercing, or coopting. The rest he confronted only if they became a problem, but with those two groups in his pocket already – the weak-willed masses and their strongest-willed leaders, the others had little chance of rebelling successfully.

Kylo needed to learn how to do the same – at least with this unit of troopers. He didn't get a chance – not today at least. The landing gear deployed as they dropped on the national mall or whatever it was the planet's inhabitants called the big open space they'd put next to their capital. It made a good landing zone.

The troopers formed up in orderly columns on a broad pavement next to a wide area of short-cropped grass. Small trees lined the edges. Various native militia members could be seen assembling further down, hurriedly moving in barricades and yelling orders to one another. Above them all, a dogfight was being waged. Kylo paused to watch it.

The TIEs were faring badly. If they hit, they killed, but the same could be said in reverse and they were being hit far more often than they managed to land a shot. The little ships were incredibly maneuverable in space – much less in atmosphere and they were unshielded. Their enemies were streamlined, jet-propelled, and _fast_ , relying on aerodynamic lift rather than repulsors which meant they shot through the sky faster than most TIE pilots could react. It would take a Jedi's reflexes to consistently hit the native fighter jets. The TIE pilots were no Jedi.

One of the TIE's came crashing out of the sky toward them. Kylo felt the surge of apprehension from the troopers behind him. Calmly, he held up his hand and diverted the path of the debris. It crashed into the grass, tumbling and crumpling. Inside, the pilot died on impact. Kylo winced. He should have caught it; should have saved him. But the moment was past.

He looked back and forth at the other TIEs circling and firing. There were too many to track and his mission was not to provide a safety net for them. (Even if he'd been the one to ask for this much air support, thinking erroneously that their mobility and vantage point would give an advantage to those on the ground. Instead, they were just a distraction and a danger.) The faster they could wrap this up, the faster the battle would be over.

With that goal, Kylo strode forward across the pavement. The assembled enemies yelled orders at him through an amplifier. He understood them, but ignored the calls for the First Order to disarm and retreat. The troopers fell in behind him, holding their fire because he hadn't ordered it yet. He wondered if their enemies would just run away. They were hunkered down behind low stone barricades.

The soldiers of this country were garbed in olive green and black. They fired at him in particular with only a smattering of shots at the stormtroopers behind him. He heard the noise, saw the flashes at the muzzle of their weapons, but it took getting hit in the head by a projectile before he actually understood what they were doing.

He'd thought … well, they were firing some kind of defective blasters at first, or maybe a sonic weapon because the things were loud enough. He'd reached for the energy beams with the Force, but they weren't there. It was something else, something more solid – something that whacked his head hard enough to rattle his brain and make him miss a step.

A half dozen more projectiles hit him before he got a sense for them in the Force. By then, two troopers had fallen and only one of them was really hurt. Those bullets that hit armor bounced off. Only those that penetrated a seam were a danger. He deflected the rest of the incoming fire and calmly walked up on the squad of militants.

They were frightened most of all by his unbothered demeanor. He'd felt their energy rise when he'd staggered from the head shot, then plunge as he continued on. It was disgusting that they were here while their leaders cowered elsewhere, keeping themselves safe after giving the orders for others to fight to the end on their behalf. He was doubly glad he'd chosen to be in the first assault.

He ignited his lightsaber, feeling the surge of fear from their foes and mild surprise from the troopers with him. They'd never seen a lightsaber for real, which was funny given how many of the melee weapons they trained with were designed to foil a lightsaber. Kylo found that peculiar, but this wasn't the time to ponder it. He still hadn't given an order to fire, so his troopers shadowed him dutifully, sheltered from the hail of bullets by his use of the Force.

Kylo moved forward gracefully, his robes flowing behind him and darkness traveling with him. More bullets flew in his direction only to be knocked to the ground a stride in front of him. The first enemy soldier stood his ground to the last and was cut in half. The demonstration made an impression on the rest. He killed three more before the group broke and fled. That was when he finally gave the order to fire.

* * *

This particular pair of countries that had united against them capitulated sometime after Kylo's strike force had mowed through about a quarter of the ruling body of the larger nation. Their blood still gummed the treads of his boots. The surrender was unconditional, as demanded.

Now it was only a matter of getting the ground force evacuation organized, which wasn't his job. Sergeant AC-0047 walked over to him from where the rest of the troopers were parceling out meal packs as they waited. "'Lord' Ren," she said. "That title wasn't in any of our training."

Kylo looked up at her from where he sat on the ground. He knew it was indecorous by First Order standards, but he could do what he wanted here – on the surface of a (so far) non-Order planet, surrounded by stormtroopers. "What of it?"

"I'm not sure how I'm supposed to treat you. Are you a face or a helmet?"

He still had his helmet on, although he'd been thinking of taking it off. He knew the jargon – faces were officers; helmets were troopers. Sometimes the phrase was 'a name or a number'. "If I were a face, you'd be written up just for talking to me."

"You gunna?"

"No."

She stuck out a meal packet to him in an awkward and direct manner. Kylo looked at it. Social graces weren't part of their training either, but offering to share food was a universal gesture of friendship. "You eat, right?" she asked as he hesitated. She had another in her other hand.

"Yes," he said after a beat, taking it. "Thank you."

She grunted. "So you're a helmet?"

"You may treat me as such." He fidgeted with the packet, realizing he was going to have to take his helmet off to eat it.

She sat on the ground next to him, taking off her own helmet without ceremony and dropping it between them. Kylo let his senses range about them, looking for who what attention was being paid them. It was very little. This was probably the least likely place in the galaxy for him to be recognized, since they had no communication with the Republic (nor, until today, with the First Order). He released the clasps on the helmet and lifted it off. She regarded him with open curiosity. When he looked back at her challengingly, she said, "You have a lot of hair."

So that was what she'd been looking at. He gave her a lop-sided smile and opened the corner of the meal pouch. Her hair was a dark brown with an odd golden sheen. It was tightly kinked, cropped short to her head. Her skin was dark, with large freckles of lighter-colored skin. It was hard to tell if she was pure human or not, given the plethora of varieties out there even among the so-called 'pure' humans.

"You don't have to follow the grooming regs?" she asked.

He shook his head and tried the food. It reminded him of runny cake batter, which provoked a weird memory to surface from his childhood. He pushed that away and focused on the now. The stuff didn't actually taste bad. He suspected it was very calorically dense. "Are all the stormtrooper meals like this? I thought they did away with this after the Empire."

"The Empire? This?"

"The Empire had liquid meals." He raised the pouch to illustrate.

"Oh. No. Well, yeah, I guess. These are field rations – no cooking, no utensils. You know what they ate in the Empire? You don't look that old."

He arched a brow at her. "I'm not. The Empire was gone before I was born." Or at least, it was gone the same day he was born. "Do you know what the Galactic Concordance is?"

"Um," she thought it over, recognizing the meaning of the words but not knowing the significance of them. "No." He smiled and chuckled softly at how little they taught stormtroopers of the larger galaxy. She asked, "Should I?" He shook his head and took another pull on the meal pouch. The sweet gruel sat in his stomach so heavily that he wouldn't want more than the little there was. No wonder the pouches were small.

"We have normal meals on ship," she said. "You've never seen what the numbers eat, have you? Where do you take mess? You don't act like an officer."

He thought about what he could say. He didn't know her. He didn't know who'd she'd talk to and where his words might travel. He didn't want to have to reach into her mind to block anything he told her. It was better to simply not say anything that led that direction. "I eat alone." It wasn't true, but it saved him from having to explain about the Knights. He set aside the finished pouch.

"Alone?" He gave her a sharp look, her thoughts betraying her disbelief. She said, "This is the most alone I've been since I was carried onto a First Order ship when I was eight. Classes of twenty, dorms the same, every year, train and drill together, patrol as a squad, communal hygiene …" She shrugged. "We even go to grooming services in batches. You eat all by yourself?" It boggled her mind. She'd longed to be alone like that, but she wondered if it would be scary.

"It's not scary." He realized she hadn't said that out loud, so he changed the subject by picking up her helmet. "I've never had a chance to look at one of these."

She gave him an odd look. "I got my first helmet when I was twelve. When we left general education and went into trooper training."

"At twelve?" he mused, looking at all the instrumentation inside the helmet that his own lacked. "Along with a blaster and a set of armor?" At twelve, Ben's father had left them and his mother was done with him as well. She'd been in negotiations with Luke to take him away. He'd been a child, filled with uncontrolled power and a volatile temper he was still struggling to master, half his life later. He certainly hadn't been ready to be armed and armored as a soldier at the age of twelve.

"Practice armor. But yeah. It's a helmet. Isn't yours the same?" She made an intention motion toward it, watching for his reaction.

"You can look at it."

She picked it up and turned it upside down. Her brow furrowed. "Where's the … It's a shell. All that's in here is comm. Where's the heads-up display?"

"What would I use one for?" There was more instrumentation in it than just a comm, but everything was built into the padding since he operated the controls with telekinesis.

"How do you know who people are?"

"I look at them. How do _you_ know who people are?" He used the Force. It had never occurred to him until just now to wonder how they managed without it.

She grinned and repeated his words back to him. "I look at them." She gestured at her helmet in his hands. "With that. Put it on."

He gave her a side-eye, then slipped it over his head. She scooted closer and toggled a control on her upper chest, near the release for the helmet. The front of the helmet on his head lit up in a display much wider than the narrow lenses he'd always assumed defined the trooper's field of vision. There was tactical information overlaid on the landscape. It was evening and dark out, but the view he was seeing had perfect visibility.

He swiveled his head until he could see the cluster of troopers standing around the mouth of the transport vehicle. Designations hovered over each of them – a rank followed by letters and numbers, fed from the transponders built into their armor. "What do you see when you see officers?" he asked.

"Their rank and name, assuming they're carrying their code cylinders. Some have implanted ID chips or trackers, just in case they don't have the cylinders on them. If neither of those, then you see nothing. Just like if they were an enemy."

"Oh," he said softly. He'd left his code cylinders on board, since he'd wanted to carry as little as possible. "What do you see when you see me?"

"Nothing."

"What would you rather see?"

"That you're one of us."

* * *

"Congratulations," Hux said with actual enthusiasm when Kylo finally returned from the planet's surface after the first ground assault. That pleased Kylo. He'd expected anger about the loss of the three gunships or entire squadrons of TIE fighters. The victory that should have been so easy had come at shocking cost in equipment and personnel – a cost Kylo had felt almost physically as repercussions through the Force. It angered him, but no matter how angry he was, they units were still lost.

If he could only grasp the dark side better, this wouldn't happen. But it was like seizing a sword by the blade. The dark side was not made for protection. How was he to do this? But Hux knew nothing of his doubts and concerns. He just knew they'd eventually won through, and thus, he rendered congratulations.

Hux peered at him. "What happened to your helmet?"

"Why?" Kylo reached up fumbling his hand across the slick top of the helm.

"It's dented. Are you well?"

It was the closest to concern he'd ever heard from the man (at least in relation to himself – he'd heard Hux's worried thoughts about others). "It's fine. A battle scar. I'm glad of it."

"You're not going to have it repaired?"

"No." After a pause he added, "I like my scars. Darth Vader was a mass of scars."

Hux blinked at him. _You're emulating him? Scars only mean you let someone hurt you._

"Scars mean I survived," Kylo said, responding defensively to Hux's thoughts. Almost overnight, Hux had become remarkably better at not projecting every single notion that crossed his mind, but his shields didn't seem to be working at the moment. "Not everyone did."

Still unguarded, Hux's thoughts went to the casualty reports. His face became somber, thinking back to some injured slave child he'd carried onto the _Absolution_ twelve years ago on his first harvesting mission after his father's death. She was too old for the intake, but after the rejection, the slavers had started shooting the group of older children. They stopped to debate among themselves over the cost of blaster charges versus the effort of killing them with batons. Hux had quietly taken the survivors while the slavers continued to argue.

The girl he'd carried had been possessed of dark hair braided in cornrows and decorated with ribbons by someone who wanted her to look her best on her way to the First Order. The slave traders didn't care about anything beyond credits so it had to be done by some relative or guardian. Hux wondered what that was like – to have someone give a damn about you.

"Why are you broadcasting your thoughts again?" Kylo said heatedly. He'd recognized AC-0047 in the memory – the freckles and the metallic sheen to her hair were distinctive. He hadn't wanted to know there was any connection between this annoying man and the troopers Kylo had helped and been helped by.

"Because I've been orchestrating this operation at high alert for three shifts!" Snidely he added, "I've been putting my efforts into things other than coddling your sensitivities."

"Sleep next time. Stims are a bad habit." They made people emotionally volatile and impaired their judgment.

"In the middle of an ongoing combat? That's what stims are for!"

"You have shift commanders for a reason. Anyway, no one was attacking the destroyers," Kylo said dismissively. "You're being obsessive."

"As a matter of fact, nuclear missiles _were_ launched at us. That we scrambled defenses and shot them all down doesn't mean it didn't happen. It's _necessary_."

Kylo was silent for a moment. If he understood the nature of the archaic weapons, they would have penetrated the shields just like any powered vessel and done a considerable amount of damage. Would a different commander have recognized the threat and addressed it, or would they have assumed the incoming projectiles were no more dangerous than standard torpedoes? Even Kylo had taken direct hits as he adapted to the different weaponry. "Fine. Everyone shipboard survived. The same can't be said for those deployed."

Hux shrugged that off indifferently. "We won. The dead are gone. No need to lament them."

"A moment ago, you were the one wallowing in sentiment!" Kylo pointed out.

"I said _nothing!_ " Hux hissed at him. "If we have to spend lives, then we will spend lives. That's how war works."

Kylo stared at him. He knew what he'd seen in that memory and it was in direct opposition to the callousness Hux was professing now. But they were both true. He'd stooped to buying slaves and bungled the encounter so that a dozen children had been shot down in front of him. Then he'd walked into the field of fire, picked up one of those too hurt to walk, and herded the rest to safety. Anyone who did the first shouldn't be allowed to do the second. Kylo had wanted things simple. They weren't.

"Get some sleep. The planet's not ours yet." Kylo strode past him. When he was out of sight of the obnoxious general, he reached up to touch the dent in his helmet. People who tried to kill him were the enemy – that, at least, he could hang onto as a simple thing.


	11. Combat Intermission

"You have an office?" Kylo walked in the next morning, looking around the room in surprise. He'd thought Hux's 'office' was the bridge. He'd been there every time Kylo had looked for him – except today. The bridge had been quietly overseeing the continuing siege of the planet (which only meant they were hanging around in orbit, given the dirtball didn't have a space force). He couldn't blame Hux for not being there. His office was a few floors down in the executive section of the administration floor.

"I'm a general," Hux answered as though that was all the answer needed. The room wasn't large as offices went. It had the usual two chairs aside from the one Hux was in himself, a desk with monitors and a projection pad, and a back wall with a few high shelves featuring a dozen objects. At a glance, they were esoteric art pieces, which didn't match up with Kylo's opinion of Hux's tastes. He wondered if he was wrong about Hux.

"What do you do?"

"As a general?" Hux asked disbelievingly.

"Here." Kylo helped himself to a seat, indicating his intention to stay. "In this office."

Hux gave a long-suffering sigh, then treated the question seriously, in the way Kylo had meant it. "I take correspondence – holocalls, text messages, and recordings. I respond to the same. It would be distracting to others if I did it at an open console, aside from the fact that I'm often discussing classified or confidential information."

Hux gestured at the monitor. "I review data files for various purposes – I remain in charge of slave harvesting, what of it we're still doing. I consult on Starkiller Base. I do research. I have a class of cadets I'm working with closely here on the _Finalizer_. I authorize expenditures and resource allocation to support my commands. I also compile after-action reports for Leader Snoke, which is what I was doing before you came in."

Kylo ignored the insinuation about having interrupted something important. "You're not in charge of Starkiller anymore. Why do you have anything to do with that?"

"Because I was in charge of it for more than three years. A handoff can't be accomplished in an afternoon. Snoke's staff has questions. I answer them. It's a very important project for the Order. I want to see it succeed whether I'm in charge of it or not."

Kylo tilted his head, looking at the items on the shelves. "That is an Abyssin ornament of protection," he said of one of the objects – a brown metal face with a snout filled with sharp teeth. "They're supposed to be amulets of protection against bodily harm."

Hux glanced up at it, his expression guarded. "'Supposedly.'"

It was grotesque and ugly, which meant it was probably authentic. "It looks real." It felt real, too, through the Force. Most of the things on the shelf had Force signatures, like someone had unerringly picked out true artifacts from dross. It was what was drawing Kylo's attention to them.

"It is. That doesn't mean it works."

Well, obviously Hux wasn't the one who'd picked them out. Snoke must have, which showed an absurd level of favoritism. Kylo asked, "Have you ever been hurt in this office?" Hux didn't answer. Kylo went on, "Real ones can't be bought. Where did you get such a thing?"

"A better question is how you would recognize 'such a thing'," Hux said. "You must have been to one of the Hutt-controlled worlds. What were you doing there?"

"My past is not a topic for conversation."

"But mine is?"

"Yes."

"Why? Simply because you can take it from me?"

There was no reason to lie about it. Kylo shrugged one shoulder. "Yes."

Some of the light died in Hux's eyes, replaced by darkness and hate. "One day," he said in a low voice, "you will be in my crosshairs and my finger will be on the trigger."

Kylo leaned forward, feeling his way through what felt like a prophecy. "That's interesting. But will you pull it?"

"That remains to be seen."

Kylo felt through that as well. It, too, had a ring of truth to it – Hux was undecided on the matter. The events that would make up his mind had yet to occur. It meant he wasn't as bloodthirsty as Kylo expected from a man intent on enabling planetary genocide. "The Force tells me that it will indeed come to pass. As you say - we shall see."

Hux sneered. "You think the Force knows the future?"

"The Force is all things," Kylo said.

"What's it like, having your every decision dictated and controlled by something outside yourself?"

"You tell me."

Hux's nose wrinkled in disgust. "I might enjoy fantasizing about having you at my mercy more than most, but that's not why you came here."

"You have mercy?" Kylo deadpanned.

"You tell me," Hux shot back. When Kylo said nothing right away, he pressed, "Why are you here?"

"I will be taking out the prototype TIE silencer for skirmishing. I'll want to speak with the Sienar-Jaemus engineers afterward about improving the design before they go to mass production."

"You're going to do what?"

"I going to make modifications." Given the same engineering team that designed standard TIEs was working on the silencer, Kylo suspected he'd have a lot to say.

"You … what are you doing with the prototype? You're- That's not your area! You're supposed to be leading the ground forces!"

Inside the helmet, Kylo smiled at how flustered Hux was. He went so far as to chuckle. "My area is what I say it is. We have no forces on the ground right now."

"But do you even know how to fly? Those are reserved for ace pilots!"

"I could tell you to check the _Eclipse's_ training records, but it's none of your business. And I've been flying for much longer than that. Our ships were being shot out of the sky yesterday. That needs to stop. I need to see how they perform myself. Then I will to talk to the designers."

"Who gave you permission to fly the prototype?"

"Tell me what I want to know." He leaned forward menacingly.

Hux laughed at him. "No. You need my cooperation. I need yours. There are rules for this sort of thing. Obey them."

Kylo sighed as he leaned back. "I did."

"Prove it."

"Colonel Kaplan cleared me." Just that morning, but Kylo didn't add that.

Hux stared at him levelly.

"If you penalize him for that," Kylo said, "I will find a way to make you pay."

"I'm terrified," Hux said dryly. "If you coerced him, then I'll find a way to make _you_ pay. I'll check in with him about it. In the meantime, what did you want?"

Kylo ground his teeth over having to repeat himself for the third time. "To talk to the engineers working on the design. Or the salesperson. Whoever. Kaplan said you were the intermediary."

"I am."

"Then 'intermediate'."

Hux turned to one of his monitors and put in information. "I could require you to pass the information through myself, but since every one of our interactions devolves into pointless bickering, I'll remove myself from the process. If Kaplan said you were qualified, then you're qualified. I have more pressing things to do."

"It's not _every_ interaction," Kylo said.

"As I said," Hux replied without a visible trace of humor, "pointless bickering." Hux pulled up a screen on contacts, then turned to face Kylo. "You'll want to speak with Derrdan Greecol on Absanz at the Sienar-Jaemus Fleet Systems factory. I don't have permission to share his direct contact information, but the receptionist can put you through and I'll tell him to expect your contact."

Kylo stood, surprised at having gotten cooperation, but still somewhat frustrated that he didn't know what he was doing wrong in his interactions with the general. It made his tone hostile when he asked, "How is it that the First Order does business with Sienar, anyway? The Galactic Concordance forbid the selling of weapons to the imperial remnants and their successor states."

Hux's brows drew together. "What are you, some New Republic lawyer?"

"I know the rules and regulations. Unlike the troopers, so do you. You're not obeying them either."

"Yes, we are! And of course I know them. We're _at war_ with the New Republic. Their rules don't apply. They're an illegitimate government – a bunch of traitors who betrayed the Empire, which was a lawful government empowered by the Republic Senate, which in turn entrusted the emperor with absolute power to crush out the rebellion which continues to this day. Upon the emperor's death, authority passed to Gallius Rax, who appointed individuals to carry out the emperor's will, myself among them. The First Order is the _legitimate_ galactic government, created, endorsed, and empowered by Emperor Palpatine himself. We never signed the Concordance. We have no obligation to obey it and every reason not to."

Kylo stood there in silence, thinking about these words. He'd never watched enough of the First Order propaganda to see where they were coming from, nor had their origins presented to him so succinctly. Until this moment, they had been nothing but the organization Snoke happened to be in control of. But the idea that they were the real galactic authority and his mother's attempt to put together a new government was the fake one – it made so much sense.

No wonder the New Republic was so corrupt and divided. Many of them, he realized, must know the whole thing was tainted at the root. Had the Force guided him to where he needed to be to fix everything? He felt like he was where he was supposed to be – despite all the challenges, the irritations, and the threats – when he reached out with his feelings, being here felt right.

"Ren?" Hux finally asked, when he'd obviously stood there too long in contemplation.

"Thank you for that explanation." Hux blinked at him in surprise and said nothing. Kylo went on conversationally, "Sienar and Kuat are bound by the Concordance though. How do they manage this?" He was curious now, not confrontational.

Hux stared at him distrustfully for a few moments, then said, "Sienar Fleet Systems Corporation reorganized itself, divesting the main company of Sienar-Jaemus Fleet and Army Systems, which serve the First Order directly and are financially separate from their parent corporation as far as I know. The Banking Clan would know better than I. As for Kuat, they're a bigger threat than the New Republic itself. They're not going to adhere to any treaty that limits their sales."

"How do you pay them?"

"'You'? Don't you mean 'we'? Or are you not part of the First Order?" Hux's tone was mocking, but Kylo took it seriously.

Kylo thought about the feeling of camaraderie he'd had on their mission. He thought about how Hux was devoted to more than the glory of his single project. He contrasted that to the disarray he'd sensed from senators from different systems and how his mother had complained bitterly about all the member planets being out for themselves. The Order was united in singular purpose. "'We'," he said after a thoughtful pause.

"Why do you think the First Order is adding a minor tributary world like this one?" Hux asked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the desk. "We don't need them, not directly. They're a net drain on our resources. But then we publish the coordinates to trading houses. Every government on this planet will want to buy weapons, luxuries, and information. They'll pay everything they have for it. The Trade Federation was nationalized by the Empire. Large portions of their infrastructure belong to the First Order. We will bring prosperity to the galaxy by reinstating economic stability."

Kylo said nothing. So many things were falling into place – things he'd overheard while trying to make sense of his mother's job and the difficulties she faced. Money was a repeated theme and here it all was, laid out simply like he was a school child. The First Order's rapid build-up out in the middle of nowhere hadn't happened without money and trade, even if it was largely sub rosa. "How … How do you know this?"

"As I said at the start – I am a general. These aren't secrets – they just don't apply to most people as they go about their duty. I am Brendol Hux's son and fortunate enough to count two grand admirals, former leaders of the High Command, as my mentors. I may not know the principals involved _well_ , but I know what's going on in the First Order. What's more interesting to me is that you obviously don't. You're from the New Republic. Do you bear them any loyalty?"

Kylo snorted. "No." He had to wonder how dangerous a question that was. "What would you do if I did?"

"That would be Leader Snoke's business, not mine."

"You're lying."

"Perhaps. Until I'm told otherwise, I will assume Snoke choosing you as an enforcer is a personal endorsement. See to it that I have no reason to question it." He glanced over at a blinking light near his monitor that asked for his attention.

Kylo didn't want to end the conversation, but he didn't know how to keep Hux's attention except by arguing. "I'm not an enforcer. I'm his apprentice."

Hux ignored the light for the moment, looking back to Kylo. "What does that mean?"

"It is a personal relationship. He is my mentor." He refrained from using the term 'master' due to the Jedi and Sith implications. "He guides me on my journey through the Force."

Hux scoffed. "Good for both of you. If you have what you came here for, then go. I have work to do. I presume you'll be at the strategic review meeting in an hour to let the rest of us in on whatever 'skirmishing' you're planning?"

Kylo sighed. "Yes. I hate those meetings."

"I'm sure you would hate being accidentally shot out of the sky by friendly fire even more. We must stay coordinated in our efforts or we're no better than that farce of a Republic." Hux reached over and tapped his screen, bringing up whatever urgent message was distracting him.

Clearly, he was dismissed. At least he had what he'd come for, and with minimal arguing. Kylo left without any snappy repartee. He had a great deal to think on.


	12. In the Air

Colonel Kaplan escorted him down to the deck of the hangar bay. Four pilots waited for them. Three were fully suited in the black flight suits of the TIE program, but with red stripes along the helmet. To signify their greater proficiency than the average pilot. The last had her helmet off and was tinkering with one of the connectors. The one closest to her nudged her. She glanced up, saw they were near, and put the helmet on as protocol dictated.

The colonel drew up before them and double-checked the tiny insignias. "Lord Ren. These will be your wingmen on today's mission: TN-4331, TN-8232, XR-1743, and TY-9878. They are among our highest scoring pilots in simulations. TN-4331 and XR-1743 have seen substantial flight time and active combat service."

"Good. Where?"

Kylo was looking at TN-4331, but it was Kaplan who answered. "Ryloth, sir."

"Ah." Kylo remembered being in a meeting when that particular action had been revealed to Snoke. The leader had not been pleased. "Vice Admiral Pabril was commanding, wasn't he?"

"Yes sir." Kaplan answered again. He moved forward a step to put himself in Kylo's line of sight, since Kylo was still facing the pilot he'd intended to speak to. The pilots themselves were silent and still. Despite them being higher ranked than mere stormtroopers, they were no more allowed to take part in the conversations of their betters than anyone else in the First Order. As long as the colonel was there, they would speak only to answer direct questions, unless specifically given liberty to do otherwise.

Kylo gave in to the local culture and turned his helmet toward Kaplan. "Show me the ship."

"Over here." He turned to lead the way. Kylo gestured to the pilots to follow. Kaplan glanced back when he heard the combined tread of many boots – he hadn't given the order. Until they took to the air, they were technically his soldiers, not Kylo's. His eyes flitted to Kylo, then back forward. Wisely, he didn't argue. He opened a side bay to reveal the new starfighter, hanging from overhead supports.

"Here it is," Kaplan said. "The TIE/vn space superiority fighter – the Silencer." He turned to Kylo. "You know its capabilities?"

"I don't need the sales pitch," Kylo said. He ran a hand along the inside of one angular wing, then turned to examine the bottom of the cockpit. He picked at a strip of tape, peeling it back. It was so new, they hadn't finished taking off the packaging. "No one has flown this?"

"No. It was just delivered to the shipyards for testing a few days ago. We were still … discussing options for pilots."

"I'll fly it."

"I was told it was a bit … highly calibrated."

"Good. This is all I need from you." He peeled off a matching strip of tape from the opposite side of the little vessel, looking around for more. If Kaplan scowled at him for the rudeness, Kylo didn't see it. Or care. The man left without any parting formality. When he was out of earshot, Kylo wadded up the tape and came out to face the four pilots. "Do you have callsigns?" They hesitated. "You can speak freely."

One at a time, they identified themselves: "Zip." "Torfa." "Dally." "Zinger."

"What are you flying?"

Zip answered. "TIE/sf's."

"Standard issue?"

"Hm … we've customized a little," Dally said.

"Yourselves?"

"Yes," she answered. She hesitated before adding, "Sir?"

Kylo shrugged. "Call me what you want."

"Sir," she said promptly. The others nodded.

Kylo accepted it. "That's good to hear – that you've customized. Creating a bond is important." He ran his hand over the missile ports below the red-hued cockpit. "Objects gain resonances from the lives they touch. A standard, mass-produced item may never have been touched by living hands. It's empty. But not this." He patted the ship. "Custom-built by engineers and technicians, torn down and reassembled. Test flights in air and deep space. We may not have flown this, but the ones who built it did."

He turned to them, suspecting he was losing them with the Force talk. It was, unfortunately, all he'd known for the previous decade and he hadn't had much in the way of 'normal' socialization before that. "The loss rate among TIEs yesterday was unacceptable. We won't be able to land heavy ground units tomorrow if the enemy still controls the air. You four and myself will thin their ranks."

"Against how many?" Zinger asked.

Kylo shrugged. "The number doesn't matter. Their speed does. If we get overwhelmed, we retreat up. General Hux will be bringing three star destroyers into high atmosphere. Based on the data from yesterday's assault, they should be too high for most ground defenses and yet low enough to give us cover. Finding the tiny step built into the side of the ship, Kylo sprang up to it gracefully, balancing on it with one foot and finding the step above it with his other. He searched the top of the vessel for more sealant or packing material. Finding none, he opened the cockpit.

Speaking to them, he said, "To your ships. I'll take a few practice turns around the hangar to get a feel for the controls, then we'll go out."

He did as he said, getting the ship running, releasing the supports, and letting it drift into the hangar at the lowest of speeds. Mostly, he was just coasting on the repulsors, but it gave him a chance to figure out exactly what 'highly calibrated' meant. What it meant was that the ship needed a steady hand. Small twitches of the controls translated into sharp changes of heading.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that, as his ability to manipulate the ship's vector using the Force was smoother than anything he could do physically with the controls. It wasn't that his hand was unsteady, but the Force was only influenced by his focus and not by g-forces, momentum, concussive blasts, or anything else that might effect his grip on the flight stick.

A voice came over Kylo's comm. "Lord Ren, bay door one is ready."

"I'm not."

"Um, he said he's not ready, sir. What does that mean? I mean, what do I say?"

Kylo opened his mouth to respond, but fell silent as he realized the petty officer had merely forgotten to mute his side of the conversation. He heard Kaplan answer in the background, "It means he's not ready. Let him be. The planet's not going anywhere."

"Yes sir." And still, the comm channel stayed open. Kylo smirked. First day on the job, he supposed. He recalled Peavey's disgust at how young and inexperienced everyone was. Kylo had not missed how two of the 'best' pilots Kaplan had, had no combat experience whatsoever. No wonder TIEs had been shot from the sky so profligately the day before. He kept his ears open as he continued turning, pivoting, and dipping the little craft.

The four pilots hung mostly stationary in their ships. It was an unusual enough thing to have happen that most of the hangar ground crew stopped their work to observe. It was also the first time they'd seen the silencer under power. True to its name, it was quiet, engines making a subtle hum and the adjustment jets surrounded with baffles to cut the sound.

After a little while, there was a beep and a click over the open comm channel, then Hux's voice asking, "Kaplan, report."

"Yes sir. They are … staging for take-off, sir."

"Staging? It's past time they were to depart. Is there a problem?"

"No sir."

"What are they doing? Is it Ren, or is there an equipment issue?"

"It's, um, he's doing a familiarization checklist. It's standard, sir."

It was not, but he had to admit it sounded like something that would be. Kylo stared at the comm, wondering why Kaplan was lying for him. Maybe it wasn't a lie, but Kaplan hadn't asked what he was doing out there. Which meant he was just making something up for Hux, who said, "A familiarization checklist? What's that?"

"It's a new ship. I'm sure he hasn't flown one of this style before. He's just being conservative."

"Conservative seems an unlikely thing to say about him. How long will this take?"

"Just a few minutes more, sir." Another ass-pull for Kylo's benefit. It made Kylo feel bad about disrespecting him earlier. Kylo did that as default toward the upper ranks. Not all of them deserved it. He suspected he needed to cut that out.

"We're burning a lot of fuel at this altitude," Hux said after a pause. "Fine. We'll remain on standby."

"Yes sir." A click.

Then the voice of the petty officer, "Should I comm the lord?"

"What for?"

"So … um … if it takes longer than a few minutes …?"

"Then the general will call back and I'll tell him it will take a few minutes more. The man's about to fly into combat. Let him choose his own time."

Kylo supposed his prolonged hesitation might look like cowardice, though he wasn't sure that was what Kaplan thought. He didn't hear any disgust in his tone. In any case, he was done testing the controls. He switched the comm channel to his pilots. "Form up. We're heading out. Bay door one."


	13. In the Fire

**A/N: As far as the Force goes, I realize other Jedi have little problem detecting or manipulating inanimate objects, i.e., "lifting rocks". In my headcanon, it's not Kylo's strong suit. Targeting in Star Wars canon is shown as manual and slow, so it is here as well. The TIE/sf fighters flown by these 'ace' pilots have built-in deflector shields. The standard ones being shot down so easily the day before are/were unshielded, which is the normal state for standard TIEs.**

 **From The Empire Strikes Back:**

Princess Leia: "Would it help if I got out and pushed?"

Han Solo: "It might!"

* * *

Kylo thought idly about the pilots' designations. They ended with one, two, three … and then eight. He recalled his father talking him through the rules on some card game that involved a straight being a winning hand. It would have augured better if the last had ended with a four. That happy moment with his father was so many years ago.

With a jolt, Kylo brought himself back to the present as a rocket flared past him. He reached after it with the Force, changing its trajectory almost too late. 'Eight' – Zinger – went tumbling in a wild spin after the rocket exploded after a glancing blow to the deflector shields rather than a direct hit.

"Evasive!" Dally called out.

Kylo grit his teeth, reaching behind and above him with the Force, for an object that had minimal signature. Zinger's TIE fighter was an unliving thing and grasping it was difficult with all the other distractions. There were more rockets headed their way. The other three TIEs broke formation, shooting at them. Kylo would have said uselessly, but they managed to blow one up at range.

He stopped Zinger's spin and switched his attention to the two rockets nearly on them. He batted one aside and it exploded where it was. They must be pressure-sensitive. He was lucky they were also staggered – not four at once, but one after another in succession. He struck the next one, eliminating it as well. A quick glance at his heads-up display showed that Zinger was climbing back into position.

To the rest, Kylo said, "Get back in formation. Stay close to me." They were quiet, these pilots. There was little cross-chatter – so far, none aside from Dally's shout. That should have been him giving the order. Her doing so was an interesting moment of independence.

Zip said, "Those missiles didn't show on incoming."

"Change proximity sensors to long range," Kylo directed. Typically in dogfights, proximity sensors were muted, given that it was expected the fighters would intentionally sweep close to larger ships or even one another. Having alarms pinging during such maneuvers was dumb.

"There's another wave in the air," Kylo said. "Zip, Torfa - target the source." He transmitted coordinates to their units, preserving his own missiles for the moment. Zip and Torfa's missiles streaked away groundward and Dally fired blasters at the incoming rockets.

Kylo cast his attention briefly back to Zinger – she'd been sent on a hard roll and it could have just been auto-pilot pulling her back into formation. He could sense her life energy, though he was right that her consciousness was fuzzy. He didn't have time to do or say anything about that. He had four rockets to punch out of the sky.

A dozen more volleys came streaking their way over the next few minutes. Each launch site was painted as a target for missiles and eliminated. Kylo handled most of the rockets, though the pilots took potshots at them as well using their laser cannons. With targeting systems being the manual things that they were, reliant on hand-eye dexterity, experience, and no small amount of luck, each of their three successful hits was an amazing feat.

About the time they'd gotten used to the pattern, the aircraft came screaming in to mix things up. This was what he'd been hoping for – to cut down the foe's air superiority. "Here they come," Kylo said quietly. Their enemies didn't have the easy maneuverability he would expect in the more advanced part of the galaxy, but they made up for it by going very fast, leaving them in firing range for a small window of time. The previous day, TIEs had gone down due to simple missiles much like the surface-to-air rockets they'd just dealt with, but smaller, ship-to-ship ordinance. They were like clumsy, low-power proton torpedoes. Under most circumstances, the TIEs could dodge them easily. But dropped right on top of them? There was simply no time.

But the Force was Kylo's ally. He saw them coming and that made all the difference. Kylo could feel the frustration and occasional flashes of fear from their enemies as the five small ships refused to be shot down. The enemy's missiles exploded harmlessly in mid-air. Flying as a tight formation, Kylo and his squad tore apart every jet that came toward them, perforating the planes with laser fire. It didn't take long for the natives to stop trying.

Kylo asked everyone for an update on armament. They were still loaded sufficiently for what he had in mind. He opened a comm channel to the star destroyer hovering above them. "Hux."

"Ren."

Kylo grinned briefly. It was a disrespectful way to address him, but it was an exact copy, down to the tone, of how he'd addressed the general. It had to be on purpose. The guy actually had a sense of humor. "Find the airfields those things launched from. We're going hunting."

"That wasn't the mission, Ren. I think-" In the background, Kylo heard someone bark, 'General!' and the comm line was muted. He didn't need to hear the rest – he'd felt it in the Force, just like he'd felt the onrushing jets. Somewhere out there, someone had pulled a trigger. Or maybe a hundred triggers at once. The Silencer's sensors lit with the lowest level alert, which was ridiculous and just went to show how little their machines understood battle. The scores of missiles just launched from the ground might not be targeting him specifically, but they were definitely a problem.

Hux's voice came back. It was steadier than Kylo would have expected. "Ren. That's more than we can shoot down. Do what you can." There was a pause. "Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Yes. On it." Kylo switched channel to his squad. Calmly, quietly, he said, "We have nuclear missiles headed for the _Finalizer_. The densest grouping is to our right. Break formation. Take down everything you can." The four ships careened away, but Kylo didn't follow. His ability to sense the future wasn't nearly as refined as Snoke or Luke, but it was fine for short extensions. Like now. Time seemed to stop for him as he considered his options.

The most likely thread in the time stream was that he would go with his squad and they'd shoot down a fifth or a quarter of the incoming warheads that were targeting the _Finalizer_. Most would get by. The _Finalizer_ would shoot down another significant fraction. The rest would impact. The destroyer would list and find itself too deep in the gravity well to recover before crashing. The natives would be emboldened, they would dig in against further conquest, and Kylo would fight them without the critical personnel he would have lost on the _Finalizer_. He would fail.

There were simply too many missiles for him to stop personally. The planet was launching everything they had, including, he noted distantly, the nations that had 'surrendered' the day before. He should have wiped out the _entire_ ruling body. It was too late for that thread, though.

Speaking of the previous day, Hux had proven they could shoot down incoming nukes, although he'd done that from higher orbit, fewer missiles, multiple ships in firing range, and with hundreds of TIEs in the battlespace. The _Finalizer_ was currently boosting toward higher orbit as fast as it could go, which wasn't very fast. The maneuver might gain them another salvo against the incoming missiles. The nearest other two destroyers were dropping in orbit to provide covering fire, but again, they'd only be in range for a round or two of fire.

The urge to rush forward and personally engage individual rockets was strong. He'd feel like he was doing something useful then, lashing out at the enemy and letting the dark side fill him. Kylo knew that was a temptation. It was an abandonment of the self-control Snoke had been urging him to develop. He was certain it wouldn't lead to the future he wanted.

All he needed to do was buy the destroyers enough time. They were rugged ships with thick hulls and redundant systems. They had proven the day before they could defend themselves. The impact he, as an individual would make, wasn't as significant as it would be if he worked as part of the team.

He looked up at the belly of the Finalizer and reached for it through the Force. He didn't need to move the bulk of the ship. He only needed to make it do its job better. If every system would operate at full capacity, nothing would burn out, no fuel lines would clog, no impurities would slow the burn, then it would go from getting one extra salvo in to getting several, plus whatever other tactics Hux and Peavey thought to enact.

Torpedoes were firing from the _Finalizer_. Kylo nudged their courses, increasing their accuracy. TIE fighters were scrambling. He made sure there were no delays – a fast, orderly deployment that went off without a hitch. He knew their orders, vaguely – they were to put themselves between the destroyer and the missiles if they couldn't shoot them down. A screening tactic … Kylo saw the most likely future time stream shift as the TIEs left the hangar. The pilots might die, but the destroyer would not fall.

Now it was a matter of how much damage he could prevent. The turbo lasers were beginning to fire as the rockets reached the edge of the _Finalizer's_ range. The missiles were some ten times faster than the jets. The lasers would not have many shots. Kylo shut his eyes, the silencer still drifting on autopilot as he influenced the aim of the destroyer's cannons.

These were small adjustments, made here and there, reinforcing what people were already trying to do. As unpiloted weapons, there was no living will in the rockets for him to contest. They were as unprotected as the unshielded TIEs the day before. They were going down just as surely, too. If he'd been watching his screen, he would have seen the numbers of incoming missiles steadily dropping. Some were taken out by torpedoes, others by his squad, others by the cannons, even a few TIEs scored hits. There were still so many.

There were only seconds left now. Torpedoes from the two other destroyers that had been near enough to help were starting to hit. Those ships might get close enough to strike with a volley from laser cannons, because the Finalizer was rising much faster than expected. Kylo could feel lives wink out as TIE fighters changed tactics and rammed their ships into the missiles they could reach. Zinger blinked out.

Kylo twitched at that. "Dammit," he whispered. He grabbed the throttle and streaked upward in the silencer. There was time for only one final gesture on his part, because he'd done everything he could to enhance others. He reached out crudely with the Force, grasping and stopping one missile. Ten others froze in space. He stared at them. That wasn't him, but they hung there all the same. A half second later, the remaining moving warheads detonated against the bottom of the star destroyer.

They flashed on impact. The radiation dazzled his eyes, but the cockpit was shielded. The underside of the Finalizer was pocked with ugly, melted splotches. Lights flickered as the ship's internal power systems were disrupted. One of the stationary missiles wavered and shot off as though to hit the destroyer. Kylo grabbed it with the Force, keeping his grip on the other one as well. That was when he figured it out – the others were hanging in space due to tractor beams, not some mysterious, unidentified Force user.

TIE fighters swooped by, shooting at the held missiles and blowing them up one after another. They were far enough from the hull for the explosions to be of no danger. The Finalizer's systems stabilized. It resumed its graceful rise into higher orbit and out of further danger. The two other ships swept to either side, making wide arcs to follow it. A few hundred buzzing TIE fighters littered the sky in case another volley was launched, but there was none. The natives had done their worst.

Only three TIEs accompanied him back inside the hangar. Kylo gave Zinger's empty rack slot a long look before parking the silencer.


	14. In the Mud

**Warning: gore. It's war. A person dies horrifically.**

* * *

They were on the ground again. They'd had to ditch their AT-M6. No matter how impressive it was when the ground trembled under the machine's feet, the big walkers didn't do well in the heart of the city – the old part, Kylo assumed. Streets were narrower. Buildings were of thicker stone. Some areas concealed subterranean districts that couldn't provide footing for the walkers. Clearing out the remaining armed opposition had turned into a job for ground units.

At the moment, their unit was pinned down as artillery rained down on them from several higher buildings ahead. It would be a simple matter to have them cleared out by TIEs, but since Kylo was certain he hadn't made a serious dent in the jet population the day before, he and the strategic command group had decided to deploy them only on demand. The 'demand' part wasn't going well.

"Lt. Phimitt, we need air support now!" Kylo's voice and the use of the officer's name did no better at getting a response than when Sergeant AC-0047 had tried. She was crouched on the other side of the mobile comm unit, leaning against the thick, crumbling stone wall as artillery of various kinds flew overhead, deflected away by the Force.

"Nubber snot," the sergeant said. "Not getting anything either, huh?"

"No."

The sergeant peeked over the notch in the wall above her. A bullet ricocheted off her gleaming white helmet. Kylo's attention was on the larger objects being flung their way. The helmet did its job, though. She grunted and got herself out of enemy sight. "Sure would be nice to have a walker in here about now. Or we could roll this up in a few minutes if someone would just bomb those guys."

Kylo looked back to where they could all see the ass-end of a mighty AT-M6 sticking rudely into the air. The front part had been lost into an underground marketplace or transportation center. Something. He just knew the thing was stuck and the entire area was so riddled with similar subterranean voids that the other walkers were staying clear, routing opposition elsewhere.

Kylo slumped against the wall and looked into the sky, letting his attention stray from the problem of making sure they weren't taken out by ordinance. There was something Luke had shown him years ago, when he was maundering on about the importance of connections in the Force.

They had several kinds of connections here. There was a communications signal, which he knew was being received if not responded to. There were scanners detecting their transponders and tracking devices, giving feedback to the people aboard ship. There were relationships and ranks and the thinner, ephemeral webbing of shared culture. All of these made a fabric that they were woven into.

Kylo looked to where the star destroyer was a faint shadow in the sky. He traced the connection to the lieutenant, slowly filtering out all the nonessential information. A bomb detonated frighteningly close. One of the troopers toward the rear of their group screamed in terror and pain. Wounded, but not dead. The noise grated on his nerves. The spike of energy through the dark side was like a thrill down his spine.

Kylo grimaced. It felt good and he hated that it felt good. Other people in pain, especially when they were _his_ people, shouldn't feel that way. He understood why Sith and other dark siders operated alone and avoided attachments. He refocused on how to get them all out of this situation. The lieutenant.

He found her. He could see her in his mind. She had the audio switched off as she engaged in some escapist amusement on the comm network. He tapped her mind, tugging at the thread of connection, and drew her consciousness away from the frivolous distraction she was indulging in. That he had to resort to using the Force this way was, frankly, incensing. She clicked the audio back on, unaware of his prodding.

"Try now," Kylo said in a voice devoid of emotion. It wasn't that he had none – no, he was boiling with it – but his troopers here weren't the target. They were doing their jobs, following orders and staying focused. All but the one babbling in agony, but Kylo couldn't blame him.

The sergeant next to him picked up the transmitter. "Air control, copy!"

Phimitt's voice came through, oblivious to how her negligence had stalled their advance and gotten people killed. "Air control receiving."

"We need support, aerial strike on elevated targets. Building tops. Sending coordinates. Acknowledge!"

"Coordinates received. We'll have … uh … bombers there in a moment."

"Don't bomb _us_."

It would be minutes before anything arrived, but at least it was on its way now. Dark energy crackled around Kylo in his stifled, barely contained rage. He wanted to reach out through the Force and snuff Phimitt out now that she'd performed her job. But they still might need her later – whatever ships were dispatched for a bombing run might be needed more than once. She was the same one who would coordinate their extraction (and now that he thought about it, that process a few days before had also taken longer than necessary). He would wait.

In the meantime, the continuing sounds of the trooper's suffering drew his attention. Kylo rose to his feet. He immediately attracted a few hopeful sniper shots. He ignored them as he walked back to the trooper laid out behind a couple drums and an air processing unit. Two others, dead, lay nearby.

The man on the ground would soon be joining them. The artillery shell, grenade, or whatever, had blown up near his right hip. It was one of the smaller pieces of ordinance tossed at them. The larger mortars were easier for Kylo to detect and deflect. It seemed their enemies had figured this out – they were smart, but this was the end of the battle. This trooper would not survive it. His hip and abdomen were a shredded mess of flesh, armor blown out of position or forced into the body. So much blood had pooled. The air was thick with the smell of his viscera.

Kylo had never seen anything like it. Nothing in his background prepared him to look on the insides of a person laid bare to the air, or worse yet, to see how that person's chest trembled as they still struggled to breathe, or to hear how they whimpered with every shallow exhalation.

Even if Kylo had had more battle experience, he wouldn't have seen wounds like this. It didn't happen much in the so-called 'civilized' part of the galaxy. Blasters tended to cauterize. They also delivered such a hydrostatic shock with impact that they often killed outright. Even if they struck armor, they'd still knock people out, though most would recover if the armor was any good. The point was that if you hit someone, they died or didn't and either way there wasn't this kind of grotesque trauma. Standard weapons in the galaxy were intentionally designed that way. This primitive backwater dirtball didn't follow the rules.

The man was muttering incoherently with pain. The thoughts he was projecting were equally muddled – barely conscious and desperately seeking relief, any relief, from the hurt. There, again, Kylo could feel the intense, pleasurable rush of dark energy. It was repellant and perverse, reminding him of the … agitation he'd felt when Snoke had killed Vice Admiral Pabril with the dark side, right in front of Kylo. It was so irreverent to use the Force like that. It had stirred such a strange, twisted hunger in him. He hated it then. He hated it now.

A true adherent of the dark side would revel in this. Would let it continue. Kylo swallowed down bile and lit his lightsaber. He swept the tip of the unforgiving blade across the man's neck, severing it. Death was quick. Kylo turned and glared at the rooftops where their enemies hid. He felt such anger seething inside that he wondered if he could tear down the buildings with it – no need for bombers, just release his wrath and rip things apart.

Snoke had told him not to push his limits or the dark side would consume his humanity in the process, leaving him marked and possibly maimed. But he felt like he was losing his humanity anyway. His chest was heaving. Sweat trickled down his face. He'd killed people before and he knew he would again, but this _hurt_. If he could just figure out how to purge that part of himself that was upset about all of this …

The power trembled inside of him, begging to be used. Then the bombers came streaking overhead, saving him from the dilemma. The troopers cheered as missiles found their target – more lives were snuffed out, but they were enemies and it was easy to ignore. Kylo turned his face toward the star destroyer above him. As soon as they got back, he had his own target to find. He didn't think that one was going to hurt. At least – it wouldn't hurt _him_.

* * *

 **A/N: What Kylo does is related in the Star Performer chapter "Office Politics".**


	15. Loot Crate

**A/N: This is set a couple years after their arrival in the First Order. Ideally, this would fit after the chapter, Sentimental Fool, but FFN isn't as kind as AO3 on inserting chapters after the fact.**

* * *

Steel grabbed the pilot's corpse by the shoulder and hauled her back off the control panel. The body was determined to slump forward, though. After struggling with it for longer than he wanted, he shoved it off to the side. The engines were humming dangerously as he looked over the settings. The console wasn't configured galactic standard, but Snoke and Kylo had been putting them all through enough training modules that he could get the gist of it.

His finger hovered over the button that would initiate shutdown. That was what he needed to do. Should do. The whine of the engines were begging for it. He looked over his shoulder. The small craft was the fanciest transport he'd ever been in that wasn't a straight-out yacht. Actually, given he'd never been in a yacht, it was the fanciest period.

He looked at the crates he'd walked past on his way here. They were stacked haphazardly around and on the cushy seats. Small crates. Thick. Heavy, from the way they were indenting the cushions. The sort of thing, to his experience, you transported ordinance in. He turned and found the stand-by setting instead, hitting it. The engines slowed to idle.

Steel walked back and popped the latch on the nearest crate. What were these people trying to get off-world so fast? They'd been trying to evacuate the capital just as the First Order overran it. He'd caught this ship before they closed the ramp and taxied out, killing the pilot as the ultimate refusal of airspace privileges. He was supposed to be out helping with clean-up, but maybe he needed to check this stuff before abandoning it. It would suck if some other enemy combatant entered the ship after he left and made good their escape.

The crate contained money – credits, to be precise. He didn't recognize the monetary unit right away, but they looked official and these guys had thought they were valuable enough to take with them. He checked another crate – same thing. He looked over the rest, slack-jawed.

Steel had come from poverty. His emerging, verifiable Force powers had been the best thing that had ever happened to his gutter family – the golden ticket for one of them to rise out of the dirt and live among the stars. He could be a hero, a Jedi, someone important.

It had been utterly crushing when he realized his meagre powers in the Force were already at their full capacity. Luke's academy hadn't prepared him for any particular trade or marketable skill. He supposed he could flip chance cubes and make a killing as a gambler until he was found out and shot for it. There would be no mind trick to get him out of a jam or blaster bolt deflection to save him. He'd just be dead.

And there Steel had been, training next to the likes of Ben Solo, scion of the Skywalkers; Juleen Nakk, connected to galactic politicians who knew Leia; Tre Gulwas, another member of royalty, high caste Fondorians this time. Ending up in Luke's academy was strongly correlated with education, contacts, and wealth – to understand what Force sensitivity was, to be able to research and happen upon the name Skywalker, and have enough clout to reach across the galaxy and get a Skywalker to listen.

Steel was just a fluke. One of Steel's uncles happened to know someone who had died over Endor. Their family received a form letter signed by Leia, informing them of the death. Steel's father had asked to be told the story. He'd memorized the details. He'd paid a week's salary to contact the great senator's office and pretend Steel was the dead man's next of kin. It wasn't true, and it unraveled soon enough, but not until Luke Skywalker came on the scene. He saw through the lies with his Jedi powers. But he also saw the truth, that the boy Mozzick Bupspur could use the Force. So off they went.

But even the orphans Luke took in had more Force firepower than Steel did! Outcasts, misfits, poorly trained or not at all, could bend the Force to their will whenever convenient. Steel had pain control and could talk to animals and enhance his senses – basic stuff. Every Jedi had that, or if they didn't, it was because it was too trivial an ability to bother with.

He couldn't read minds or move big things or make people do what he wanted. He couldn't see the future, nor was he gifted with mechanical aptitude or any supernatural understanding of how things worked. Luke tried to get him to quit. Go home. Hang it up. But the idea of crawling back to his parents and admitting he was a failure … he couldn't do it.

He refused. Luke would have to pick him up over his shoulder and physically remove him from the camp before Steel went willingly. (Or, humiliatingly, all Luke really had to do was use the Force to tell Steel to leave, because Steel had no more defense against a mind trick than any other person. He was marked as weak-willed and gullible no matter how much he tried not to be.)

So he'd stayed. While his family dreamed of him having made it. Made something of himself. Escaped the cycle of poverty. When really all he'd done was ride on the coattails of the mighty. He stayed at the mercy of Luke, then Kylo, then later that of Snoke. Even when he was at Luke's, he didn't talk to his family. That would have involved admitting he couldn't do any of the miracles they thought he was capable of.

Once they took refuge in the First Order, secrecy was mandatory, so at least he had an excuse for not letting them know. Luke was still out there looking for them, hunting them. (Not to mention the families of the important people Luke had had as students. Steel's family wouldn't be hunting for him. They were illiterate. The only news they got was on public holos. They could barely manage missing work due to sickness, much less sparing resources to search for their lost son.)

He ran his hand across the shiny, metallic rectangular shapes. He'd never seen so much money. Crates and crates of it. What could his family do with this much money? What could _anyone_ do with it? He was snapped out of the fugue by bootsteps on the ramp. He jerked up to see a stormtrooper leap into the opening, blaster rifle pointed at him. But the Knights of Ren, clad all in black and helmeted, were hard to mistake for anyone else. The rifle barrel jerked downward.

"Clear?" the trooper asked.

"Clear," Steel confirmed. He shut the crate. As the trooper turned to leave, Steel said, "Hey! Get me a pilot in here."

The trooper turned back. "A pilot?"

"Yeah, someone who can fly this thing."

The trooper stared at him, doing that thing with their shoulders to indicate befuddlement since no one could see their faces. Shoulders slumped downward, head pulled up and back. "We don't have pilots."

"No one in your unit is trained to fly?"

"No. Sir." He sounded confused that Steel would even ask.

"Okay, fine. Go on. I'll figure it out myself." This must be why Snoke and Kylo had emphasized all the knights learning the basics of ship operation. If he crashed along the way, then at least he'd die rich.

The trooper nodded and scurried off to shoot bad guys somewhere else. Steel closed the ramp and returned to the pilot's chair, yanking the woman's body out and dumping her on the floor. He grimaced at the amount of blood on the seat and sprayed across the far side of the console. But whatever. He sat down and told himself this was why they wore black.

* * *

"What is this thing?" Colonel Pinch-Face said as Steel came down the ramp of the stolen ship. The landing had been rough, but hey, he'd landed. On top of a crushed mover platform, but at least he'd managed to avoid people.

The star destroyer's hangar bay was hopping, with ships and troopers and walkers moving all over the place. Military operations on the planet below were far from finished. But the bay commander had still found time to come over and chew his ass about bringing some alien almost-a-yacht transport onto her vessel.

"It's mine," he said confidently. He reached up to the support pole for the ramp and wiped his gloved hand off on it. As he'd expected, it left a gory red smear.

She blanched at that. Pinch-Face she might have been, she wasn't old enough to have been in the Galactic Civil War. She would have been a kid at the time. Then, as a consequence of her rank and being in the navy, she'd been stuck on board and never seen actual action.

Inside his helmet, Steel smiled at her. "I need something real to get actual flight time on. They were about to launch it anyway. We would have shot it out of the sky. No one's going to miss it." Or the cargo. Which he didn't mention. "Would you rather I used one of your ships for practice?"

"No." She clearly struggled to find something to object to. The weird position of the knights in the hierarchy always threw these folks for a loop as they tried to work out how to interact. It was funny. Finally, she settled on something: "You can't park it here! It's in the way of operations."

"So where do I put it?"

Some sergeant off to the left called for her. She looked that way and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, 'Up your ass would be a good start.'

"Tell you what," he offered with a chuckle, "I'll get it into the bulk cargo area. You're not going to be accessing that much until things calm down. But there are a couple dead guys in here I'll need to take care of, so tell your people to stay clear until I have it decontaminated." And all the money hidden properly.

She grimaced. The sergeant was approaching her with a report on the next wave of troopers. "Fine," she waved Steel on.

* * *

"Why did only half of it get deposited?" Steel asked, reviewing the text on the flimsy. It didn't seem like a good deal - this piece of plastic in exchange for all that money. "Where's the other half?"

"Spent, or in my pockets. Metaphorically, of course," the insectoid Geonosian said evenly. "I told you my cut up front."

"Your cut was twenty percent. Not fifty. I'm not stupid."

"Twenty percent _after_ exchange rate, transportation, and fees. I explained that."

"Where's the math?" He turned the sheet over, but there was nothing on the back.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to run a smuggling operation in the First Order? You guys are a closed fist!" The smuggler captain held up her segmented hand to illustrate. "And credits don't mean anything. You all want goods. Those take up space. Space makes it harder to hide. You guys don't think much of prisons or fines, either. Ship captains have been shot for smuggling, _especially_ the non-human ones! It's not healthy! I err on the side of caution. Always, always!"

Steel rolled his eyes and grumbled. But he couldn't argue. Of the first two contacts he'd been given, one was dead (and yes, he'd been non-human) and the other (human) was convinced Steel was trying to trick him into revealing his operation so First Order security could take him down. It wasn't until the third try that Steel got any traction, and this was on people Caspire told him were known smugglers. She had contacts among the Order officers. Steel was pretty sure she was sleeping with a few of them, but that wasn't his business. The smugglers were. "Okay, but you took twice as much as our deal."

"I took _exactly_ as much as our deal!"

He rubbed the flimsy between his fingers and considered his options. They were rather limited. Blackmail, threats, and extortion just meant any smuggler who heard about the incident wouldn't deal with him if he wanted to do this again sometime. He didn't have a mind trick to convince them to deal fairly. And who knew? Maybe this _was_ fair.

The smuggler asked, "Like I asked before, do you have a name of a commanding officer I can use? If things go bad, someone I can name who will make sure I don't get dead on your account?"

Steel chewed his lips. Obviously, the captain knew how the First Order worked. You went up the chain of command to get yourself out of trouble. But the problem was, Kylo was not shy about his dislike of smugglers, thieves, and spies. They were underhanded. Beneath him. Kind of like, well, Steel's whole family. Steel liked the guy and depended on him, but this wasn't one where he could ask for Kylo's help. Caspire had already helped him. She didn't want to get sideways with her contacts if he got caught. And Tark? Well, Tark was still digging himself out of his own hole.

The smuggler offered, "Listen, you don't like it? We never do business again. But you come to understand this is a cost, that I am reliable, that I am careful and your commander never found out, you didn't get caught, they did in fact get the money you sent just maybe not as much as you were expecting, yes? You know this. You'll come back. We'll do business again. Same deal."

He wished he could read minds, although he doubted that would tell him anything new. But his family had gotten some of the money. Untraceably, he hoped. He'd spent the last month fantasizing about what they'd do when they realized the windfall – what they'd think, what they'd buy, how they wouldn't have to worry so much anymore, how he'd finally made a difference. He nodded finally. "Okay. We'll do business again."


End file.
